


For What Binds Us

by twobirdsonesong



Series: For What Binds Us [1]
Category: CrissColfer - Fandom, Glee RPF
Genre: Chaptered, Complete, Darren sort of buys a farm, Feelings, Future Fic, Getting Back Together, Light Angst, M/M, Making Up, Post Glee, RPF, Reconciliation, Reconciliation Sex, Romance, and raises chicken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:39:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twobirdsonesong/pseuds/twobirdsonesong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's five years after the end of Glee and Chris and Darren haven't seen each other since everything fell apart.  When Chris shows up unexpectedly at Darren's new home, he struggles to find out if they still have a place in each other's lives.</p><p>Warnings: brief mention of Chris with an OMC, who doesn't not appear 'in person' during the fic.  Additionally, Lea Michele is with a new unnamed, unseen husband and pregnant with their first child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: No Time To Regret

**Author's Note:**

> "And when two people have loved each other  
> see how it is like a  
> scar between their bodies,  
> stronger, darker, and proud;  
> how the black cord makes of them a single fabric  
> that nothing can tear or mend."
> 
> \- Jane Hirshfield, "For What Binds Us"

Chris isn’t even home when Jamie moves out.  He’s had a day full of meetings – with the last one running late because of someone’s ego – and hadn’t gotten around to listening to the voicemail Jamie left earlier in the afternoon.  He only knows his boyfriend ( _ex-boyfriend_ ) is gone because there’s a set of keys on the kitchen table and a missing pair of shoes by the front door when he finally gets home that night.  Chris pauses in the doorway, staring at the keys.  There’s a bottle cap attached to the key ring from the bar they’d first met at.  It had seemed cute at the time – romantic, even, that kind of memento – but now, staring at the thin, dented metal and the logo that’s mostly scratched up, it just seems stupid.

 

He wasn’t hungry before and he’s really not now.  Chris passes the kitchen, flicking off the lights, and goes up to his bedroom.  He doesn’t bother to check the closets because he never gave Jamie a drawer anyway.  He’s gotten tired of moving his clothes to the side only to inevitably move them back again.  Brian is on his bed, curled up on the pillow that’s supposed to belong to him.  The look in the cat’s lazily narrowed eyes is three steps towards satisfaction. The last time Jamie left him a message it was about the grocery bill or something just as mundane.  Chris is pretty sure the message he just deleted from his phone without listening to it had nothing to do with milk or bread.  He doesn’t think he cares.

 

Chris drops his clothes in a pile on the floor and flops down on the bed.  The expensive mattress is a comfort (these days Chris gets a twinge in his lower back sometimes, especially when he’s been on his feet all day), but the blankets smell of Jamie’s cologne.  Chris wrinkles his nose against it and rubs a hand against his chest.  He’s going to have to do the laundry now, too.

 

He rolls out of bed, taking the edge of the blankets with him.  Brian jumps to the floor as his pillow gets disturbed and the twitch of the end of his tail tells Chris he’s going to need to feed the cat in the next fifteen minutes or else.  He strips the bed bare and gathers up the laundry.  When he passes by the master bathroom, he spots the towels hanging on the bars – his two blue ones and the one grey towel hanging on its own bar.  He grabs that too and the spare sitting on the shelf.  There are blankets in the hallway closet Chris thinks he and Jamie took to the beach a couple of times, and the hand towels in the kitchen could probably use a washing too.

 

He met Jamie at a bar in West Hollywood during a random night out with friends.  Chris can’t even remember which bar it was anymore, though he suspects Jamie could.  Jamie had a knack for remembering the things Chris didn’t even realize he’d forgotten.  He hadn’t meant to meet anyone new that night, and he certainly hadn’t meant to let someone buy him a drink, but it’d happened that way anyway.  It wasn’t the first time.  Probably wouldn’t be the last.

 

It’s eleven o’clock at night on a Tuesday and Chris sits on the floor next to his washing machine, surrounded by everything in his home that could possibly be thrown into the wash, even the things Jamie never touched.  Like the set of linen napkins for the holidays.  Brian pokes his head around the door and stares.

 

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Chris mutters.  Brian blinks once, slowly, and then leaves.  Brian never really warmed up to Jamie.  Chris should have noticed.

 

Chris rolls his eyes at his cat, digs his phone out of his pocket, and thumbs the first name that comes to mind.

 

It rings a few times before picking up and Chris imagines Lea carefully rolling over, mindful of her growing belly, and glaring at the screen before finally answering.

 

“He left, didn’t he?”  Lea asks by way of greeting.

 

Chris sighs and draws his knees up.  The washing machine is an almost soothing rumble against his back.  “Why is that the first thing you thought to say to me?”

“Because these days you only call me first when another one of your…boys leaves, or when you leave them.”  She doesn’t sound angry, not exactly.  Just disappointed.  Or resigned.

 

Chris frowns.  There’s the beginning of a hole wearing in the inseam of his left thigh. “That’s not true.”

 

Lea makes a disbelieving noise.  Chris closes his eyes and pictures her settling into a semi-comfortable position, half on her side, while her husband sleeps soundly next to her.

 

“Maybe it’s a little true,” Chris concedes.  He can’t think of the last time he picked up the phone to call Lea for any reason other than complain about yet another failed attempt at a relationship.  He’s pretty sure he sent her a message about meeting up for a show last year.  And they’d talked a few months back Lea called him to tell him about her pregnancy.  It’s just that Chris doesn’t often do the calling.  Maybe he should.

 

“So, what was it this time?”

 

“I don’t even know.”  The words are bitter on his tongue, even if it’s not exactly a lie.  “I came home and he was gone.”

 

“He didn’t say anything?”  Lea sounds tired and Chris figures growing another person might do that to someone.

“He left a message,” he concedes.

 

“What did he say?”

 

Chris pauses three heartbeats too long.

 

“Chris…”

 

“I deleted it.  Without listening to it.”  Chris scrubs a hand across his face and feels like an asshole.  “I didn’t think it’d be important.”

  
The disappointment in Lea’s sigh is thick through the phone and Chris cringes.  “What are you doing?” Lea asks.

 

“What?”

 

“What are you doing?”  She repeats, at thought that makes it clearer.

 

“The laundry.”

 

“Colfer, it’s almost midnight, I’m pregnant, and I have a signing meeting at 9am tomorrow.”

  
Chris tips his head back against the washing machine. “I really don’t know.”

 

There’s a pause long enough that Chris worries Lea’s about the hang up on it.  He might deserve it this time.

 

“I’m going to tell you an address.” Lea starts.

 

“What are you-”

 

“Stop talking and listen to me.  I’m going to give you an address and you are going to go there.  And don’t bullshit me, Colfer.  I’ll know if you don’t.”

 

“Is this an intervention?” Chris asks and regrets the choice of words immediately.  A husband and a baby on the way don’t erase all wounds.  “I don’t need…that.  I don’t have a problem.  I’m doing fine.”

 

“You have many problems, Chris.  And you mostly certainly aren’t doing fine.”  Chris can see Lea’s eye roll from three thousand miles away.  “I’m going to text you the address – don’t you dare delete it.”

 

Chris wishes she were there to hug, growing belly and all.  “You know that I – that I appreciate you, right?  That I love you.”  He feels like it’s been too long since he’d said it to anyone.

 

“Uh-huh.  Love you too.  I’m going to back to bed now.  Try calling me for something other than a breakup, okay?”

 

“I will.”

 

“And before I give birth,” Lea adds.

 

Chris huffs something approaching a laugh.  “I _will_.  I promise.”  Chris tries not to think about his last few promises.  And how most of them lie broken at his feet.  Lea hangs up on him and Chris closes his eyes, takes a deep breath.

 

His phone lights up and buzzes in his hand a few moments later.  It’s an address in San Francisco.  Chris frowns.  He wonders why Lea would want to send him six hours outside of Los Angeles, but he knows better than to question her.


	2. Above the Blue and Windy Sea

It’s not that Chris forgets about the address, not exactly.  It’s just that he sits down to work on what’s supposed to be the new book and doesn’t emerge from his office for four days.  He gets that way from time to time, too focused for anything or anyone else.  The narrow concentration is good, sometimes.  He gets shit done; meets deadlines and puts out product.  It’s his job and he’s good at it.  But it means he forgot about the other things in life.  He forgets there were plans made, friends to see, relationships to work on.  He doesn’t know how to explain to others that he hasn’t returned a phone call or responded to an email because he was stuck on a plot hole that wouldn’t fill itself in.  He can’t always justify forgetting he had a date because he was a page away from finishing a chapter or almost finished cleaning up a script.

 

Chris likes the freedom of writing books and working on scripts that may or may not ever get produced.  He gets paid when they’re bought from him whether or not they ever make it to a screen, big or small.  He gets to set his own hours, such as they are, and only answers to his editor and publisher.  If he wants to sleep in and then spend 36 straight hour writing he can.  There’s no one to tell him otherwise.  Well, there isn’t now.  Jamie hadn’t understood how he worked, none of them had.  (Though Chris imagines he didn’t exactly understand them either.)

 

It’s all for nothing right now anyway.  Chris hasn’t written was feels like a good sentence in months.  Or more.  The words aren’t coming, and when they do, they’re terrible.  He doesn’t know what’s wrong and he doesn’t know how to fix it.  He has pages of shit that read back like a fourth-grader wrote them, and not one of those hyper-intelligent fourth-graders who puts the rest of them to shame.

 

Chris is sitting at his desk, staring blankly at a Word document when his phone buzzes, Lea’s name and picture flashing on the screen.  Remembrance crashes through him.

 

“Oh shit,” he mutters, reaching for the phone.  “Hey,” he starts to answer, but Lea bowls right over him.

 

“I know you haven’t gone,” she accuses.

 

“I can’t just up and go,” Chris rakes his hand through his hair.  “I don’t even know where I’m going.”  It’s the flimsiest of excuses and Chris winces as soon as he says it.

 

“Yeah you do.  I gave you the address.  This is easy.”

 

Chris opens a new tab in his browser and Google maps the address.  He frowns.  The image is all blurred out, though if Chris squints he’s pretty sure it’s a house of some kind.  And that’s not in the middle of the city, but someplace with a lot of greenery.

 

“Lea, this place hardly exists on Google Maps, and you know how I feel about things that don’t exist on Google.”

 

“Like I would send you someplace dangerous.”

 

“Well, it’s not like I have an appointment,” Chris tries to reason, not that he thinks he’s ever going to get out of this.  Lea’s always been too persuasive for her own good.  “I can’t just…walk up.  What if they’re not there?  I’m not driving that far for no reason.”

 

“It’s not ‘no reason.’  I promise.  Go this Saturday.  It’ll be fine.  And you can always fly.  Personally I think you should drive.  It’s much more scenic.”

 

“Lea…” Chris starts.

 

“Goddamnit Chris,” Lea interrupts and her tone says she’s losing her patience with him.  Chris can’t exactly blame her.  “You are going to make my morning sickness return.”

 

“We wouldn’t want that.”

 

“No, we wouldn’t.”

 

Chris imagines her looking over at her husband.  When Lea and her husband had first starting dating Chris thought it would be weird, but no one can live in the past.  And Lea’s certainly happy, so he’s happy for her.

 

“Fine,” Chris says finally and rolls his eyes at the squeak of triumph that comes through the phone.  “But if this ends with me dead in a ditch somewhere in the middle of California, I’m coming back to haunt you.”  Chris hangs up before Lea can tell him that would probably never happen.

 

Chris saves his Word document (he can’t hardly bear to call it a ‘book’ at this point – just a collection of garbled, useless words) and closes his laptop, knowing he won’t get any more work done tonight.

 

***

 

It’s not even dawn when Chris drags himself from his cozy bed and gets into his car that Saturday morning.  There’s a chill in the air and he rubs his hands together while his car warms up.  He double checks that his phone and iPod are all plugged in the way he wants them, not wanting to fumble around once he’s on the road.  He’s got the address mapped in his phone and his GPS, and he’s got a printed map tucked into the glove compartment, just in case.  Never hurts to be prepared when he’s driving hundreds of miles to an unknown destination.

 

Chris yawns for the second time in three blocks from his house and turns towards the closet Starbucks he knows of.  The GPS beeps in annoyance at him for going off-route and Chris glares at it.  If this is how his little day-trip is going to go, he’d really rather get back into bed with his cat.  It’s not like he doesn’t have things to do that don’t involve driving six hours.

 

The girl in the drive-thru window at the Starbucks gives him an odd, open-mouthed look as she hands him his latte and Chris is sure to tip her well.  He doesn’t need any gossip of him being a cheap tipper following him to the Bay area.  And besides, she was up even earlier than he was and deserves some sort of compensation for that sacrifice.

 

Chris escapes the side streets and merges onto the freeway, sliding between a hired black SUV and a little silver BMW.  There’s not a ton of traffic, not this early heading north out of the city, and Chris settles into a lane.  The road stretches out beneath his tires and Chris wiggles in the seat, trying to get comfortable.  It’s been years since Chris took a drive like this anywhere and it’s hard to settle into the rhythm if it.  He remembers a drive out west, years ago.  That one had been an early morning too, and Chris remembers singing along to the radio with the windows down as the sun rose on the horizon stretched out vast in front of them.  He doesn’t remember what they were singing anymore, but he remembers being happy.

 

The sun is rising now.

 

Chris stops somewhere near Los Banos because he doesn’t like to drive with less than half a tank of gas if he’s not in the city.  And besides, he really has to pee.  The second cup of coffee an hour out of LA wasn’t the best idea.

 

He checks his messages as he wanders through the aisle of the convenience store, stretching his legs.  He already has a voicemail from his manager, and one from his literary agent.  They’re still waiting for new pages.  Chris thinks about the document that’s waiting for _him_.  He’d deleted everything he’d written during his four-day spree after he’d read it all aloud to Brian.  His cat hadn’t been impressed either.  Chris deletes the messages, too.  He has a text from Lea wishing him luck and telling him to keep an open mind about things.  That one he keeps.

 

He takes a couple of pictures of the rest stop before he gets back in the car, though he’s not sure why.  It’s not like he’s going to post it to the Internet.  And it’s all desert anyway.

  
The second half of the drive passes quicker than Chris thought it would.  He finds himself lost in thought and humming along to the radio.  The miles pass under his tires and even if Chris isn’t solving the problem of his book, he’s clearing his mind all the same.  At least a little.

 

Finally, Google Maps tells him to make a final turn before he reaches his destination.  Chris finds himself pulling up a long, gravel driveway and he realizes that he’s probably about to show up at someone’s _home_.  Chris doesn’t know if he’s terrified or not.  A house appears at the top of the hill. 

 

The house is adorable, idyllic even, painted a warm yellow with blue and white trim.  There are shutters on the windows and tea lights along the eaves and Chris thinks it’s something out of a rustic goddamn fairytale.  Wild bushes Chris can’t even begin to name partially obscure a wooden fence lining the property.  There’s no name on the mailbox as Chris approaches the stone walkway to the vibrant blue front door.  A wrought iron bell that looks like it was salvaged from an antique store just out from the frame, but Chris knocks instead.

  
He waits.  No footsteps sound from inside the house and no one calls out, but Chris thinks he hears a dog bark somewhere in the distance. He knocks again.  He wants to leave, but can’t.  Won’t.  He just drove five hours to…do whatever it is he’s supposed to do here.  He’s not going to leave without doing just that.

 

“Hello?”  Chris asks the door, uselessly.

 

Chris tries to peek in through the big front windows, but all he sees is comfortable furniture, thick rugs on the floors, and wooden bookcases filled to the brim.  Someone clearly lives here, and lives well, that much Chris can tell.

 

Chris goes around the side of house, past wild rose bushes and fragrant lilacs.  The pathway suddenly opens into an expansive backyard abloom with vegetable patches and fruit trees.

 

“Hello?”  Chris calls out again, feeling stupid about it and completely out of place.

 

A sleek black cat blinks sleepily at him from underneath a tangle of vines from a tomato plant and a big tiger-striped mutt of a dog barks at him from near the fence.

 

“Oh hush,” Chris tells the dog.  “I have an appointment to be here.”  The dog eyes him like he’s about to herded forcefully off the property.

 

“Briggs, knock it off you big idiot,” a shockingly familiar voice calls out.  Chris turns, heart dropping to his shoes before leaping to his throat, choking off his next breath.  A shiver races up his spine and gooseflesh breaks out all along his body, despite the warm sun beating down on him.

 

Darren emerges from what’s clearly, even to Chris, a large chicken coop.  His fitted jeans are dirty down to where they’re tucked into mud-splattered boots and his tank top is faded and threadbare where it clings to the lean planes of his body.  His skin is sun-dark and shining with sweat and he’s cradling a pile of eggs in his broad hands.  Chris’ jaw drops open before he can catch it.

 

Thirty-three fits Darren better than twenty-six ever did, and certainly better than twenty-eight.  The circles under his eyes are gone, replaced by deepening crow’s feet etched in the corners of his wide, surprised eyes and his mouth is creased with laugh lines.  His hair is longer and wilder than it’s been in a while and Chris swears he can see the glint of grey hidden between the dark strands.  (Chris is also pretty sure Darren’s hair is _thicker_ than he remembers, but he doesn’t know if Darren _did something_ , or if it’s the result of being free from hair product.  Chris thinks that’s something he should know.)  There’s a scar on Darren’s chin that Chris wants to ask about, but only if the story is better than the one for the long-faded cut on his cheek.

 

Chris knows the moment Darren spots him because he can see the way he immediately stop.  He can see the hitch in Darren’s breath and the way his eyes widen in something more than shock, more than surprise.  Their eyes meet across the vibrant garden and whatever Chris thought would happen when he arrived at the destination programmed into his phone, it certainly wasn’t this.

 

“Lea,” Chris breathes for want of anything else to say.  It seems to knock out the tension in Darren’s body that was holding him so unnaturally still.

 

“I know it’s been a while,” Darren says, taking a few more steps away from the chicken coop.  His body is tense; jaw set tight and everything radiating confusion and discomfort.  “But I didn’t think you’d forget my name.”

 

Chris feels his ears flushing pink; his cheeks are burning hot.  He can’t take his eyes off the solid, bare curve of Darren’s collarbone or the spray of chest hair, dark against his tan.

 

“No. I…Lea, she-” Chris clenches his fists at his sides and Darren nods, like something almost makes sense.  Almost.

 

“She told me someone might be coming to see me.” Darren sets the eggs down, as though he’s afraid he might drop them, or crush them, and wipes his hands on his thighs.  “I didn’t think it’d be you.”

 

Chris looks away, feels shamed and can’t explain why.  The dog, Briggs, is still staring warily at him from the fence.  Chris can’t blame him; he knows he doesn’t belong here too.  He wishes he could read Darren’s face – the once familiar features – but the years have given him a bit of inscrutability. 

 

“I can go,” Chris says softly.  “I didn’t…know.  She didn’t.”  He pauses and takes as deep a breath as he can.  “I should go.”

  
Darren shakes his head and Chris swears his curls gleam under the sun.  He stoops to pick the eggs back up into his hands.  Chris can see they aren’t white, but pale shades of green and blue speckled with brown.

 

“Don’t be silly,” Darren says and he starts walking away from the chicken coop, towards the house.  Towards Chris.  Chris can see the flex of his thighs beneath the worn fabric of his jeans.  He jerks his eyes away.  Briggs gets up from his post by the fence and trots over to follow at Darren’s hip.

 

“That’s a long drive,” Darren continues.  “You came up from LA, right?”  He doesn’t quite meet Chris’ eyes as he passes him to head for the steps leading up to the back porch.  Chris trails after him.  So does Briggs.  “I’m sorry.  I haven’t really kept up with…everything.”  There’s a catch in Darren’s voice that Chris can’t place. 

 

Darren pauses at the back door to his house.  “Sorry, could you, ah, get the door?  My hands…”

  
Chris looks down where Darren is still holding the delicate looking eggs.  “Yeah, shit.  Here.”  He reaches past Darren, careful not to brush against him, and pushes the door open.  Darren’s mouth twitches in what might be a smile.

 

“Thanks.”

 

Chris follows Darren inside.  The back door leads directly into a mudroom where Darren manages to toe his boots off.  Chris leaves his own shoes next to Darren’s and doesn’t think about the last pair of shoes his sat next to.  Briggs trots past them both and disappears somewhere inside.

 

The mudroom opens into a charming, rustic kitchen.  Chris takes in the woodblock counters and the stonework over the oven, the pots that hang along the walls and the brightly colored dishes stacked on the open shelves.  Potted rosemary sits in the windows.  It feels warm, but maybe that’s just the sunlight glowing off the orange accents.  Chris never once imagined Darren living in a place like this.  He remembers too modern couches and a bathroom that never quite worked right.  But watching Darren move with easy familiarity around the woodblock island with the row of stools to put the eggs away in the refrigerator, Chris can’t picture Darren anywhere else.

 

“So,” Darren starts.  He turns and leans back against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest.  “You still live-”

 

“I moved,” Chris blurts out and he doesn’t know why.  He feels off balance and out of sorts.  He wants to get back into his car and drive straight home.

 

“Oh, not to New York…” Darren’s brow furrows.

 

“What?  No.  I moved out of that house.  Uhm, the one that you-” Chris pauses, swallows heavily and looks away.  None of the handles on the cabinets match.  “I moved.”  It’s all he can think to say about it.

 

“Oh.”  Darren presses his lips together.

 

Chris thinks it shouldn’t be this awkward.  He’s gone years without seeing an old friend before and picked right back up where they left off.  But this, this feels different.  This feels like there’s something missing, an unbridgeable gap between them where once there was something real and tangible.  It’s not quite like he’s walked off the street and into some stranger’s home (except maybe he has).

 

“So, I’ve got a gig tonight,” Darren says. “You wanna come?”  He cocks his head questioningly and Chris wishes his face weren’t so hard to read.  Darren’s eyes are the same burnt hazel they’ve always been, but they’re guarded.

 

“You still play shows?”

 

A look flips across Darren’s features too quickly for Chris to categorize.  The lead weight in his stomach grows heavier.  He once thought he knew Darren’s face so well.

 

“It’s just a gig.  You should come.  Besides, you drove all this way.  It’ll be fun.  It’ll be just like-” Darren stops himself and Chris stomach feels heavy.  He knows what Darren was going to say: _just like old times._   Except it was never like that.  They don’t have those things to fall back on.

 

“I’d love to come,” Chris says and he wants to mean it.  “Thanks.”

 

Five years ago, Darren eyes would have lit up and he would have bounced in excitement at the idea of playing for Chris, for anyway.  Now, he simply nods before pushing away from the counter.

  
“I’m gonna take a shower and change.  Make yourself at home, okay?”  Darren pauses, turns back.  “It’s good to see you, Chris.”

 

Chris swallows, stomach flipping at the sincerity writ all across Darren’s features.  “You too.”

 

_It’s been too long and I don’t why I’m here or what I’m doing.  I don’t who you are anymore and I think I don’t know who I am either._

 

Darren nods and then disappears out of sight from the kitchen.  Chris waits until he can’t hear footsteps on the wooden staircase that lead up to the second floor anymore before letting out the breath he feels like he’s been holding since he go out of his car and walked up the stone pathway to the bright blue front door.

 

He ventures from the kitchen and into the living room, suddenly eager to see the rest of Darren’s home.  The floor is a gorgeous, rich wood, covered in thick area rugs and several large couches frame a TV that’s mounted on the wall, which Chris is actually surprised to see.  But the sleek piano angled in a corner isn’t a surprise.  The black cat from outside is now sleeping on the back of a couch, curled in a pool of sunlight.  Chris remembers the bottles of allergy relief he used to keep in his bathroom drawer and wonder how Darren ended up with a cat of his own.  A coffee table holds a couple of books and little else.  Paintings and photographs hang from the walls where there’s space that isn’t taken up by tall, overflowing bookshelves.  Chris’ breath catches in his chest and his throat burns when he spies a couple overly familiar spines among the titles on the shelves.

 

He turns and finds himself looking a big, comfortable looking chair nestled into a wide nook near a bay window.  A worn, faded blanket is draped messily over the back of the chair and a University of Michigan coffee mug sits on in a little table next to the chair.  A novel without a cover and a bookmark halfway through is tucked next to the mug.  This is where Darren likes to be, Chris can tell.  It might just even be his favorite part of the house.  The room smells of wood and rosemary and the lingering traces of the cologne Darren has worn for years and Chris lets himself inhale deeply.

 

Chris wanders the perimeter of the room, keeping an ear out for the shower to turn off, while he scans the wall shelves for knick-knacks and photographs of anyone he recognizes.  He doesn’t want to admit he’s looking for himself.  Briggs eyes him suspiciously from a spot near the kitchen.

 

“I’m not going to steal anything,” Chris tells him, but the dog doesn’t look like he believes him.

 

Darren has photos of all the usual suspects all around – on the walls, in little frames on his bookshelves.  Chris remembers a few of the pictures being taken, all those years ago, others he’s never seen before.  One catches his eye and he stops dead in front of a shelf.  It’s not a huge photo, but it’s frame by itself, not in a collage with others.  And it’s of him.

 

Chris remembers so clearly the night it was taken, remembers the long hours of filming, the coldness of the ice skating rink penetrating his bones despite his coat.  He remembers Darren trying to warm him up inconspicuously and he remembers giddily posing for that very photo while Darren gazed up at him with eyes so big he could hardly look back.  Chris almost smiles but his stomach twists with longing.  It’s a time long past and he doesn’t know why Darren kept the reminder of it. 

 

He reaches out to touch it when the sudden silence of the shower turning off startles him.  Chris jerks his hand away and rushes back to the kitchen, grabbing a random magazine off the counter and pretending like he’s been engrossed in it the whole time.  He tries to calm his racing heart and can’t quite manage it.

 

“Hey,” Darren says as he appears from the hallway Chris assumes leads to the bathroom, and his bedroom.   His hair is damp and he’s changed into clean pants and an only slightly wrinkled button down.  He hasn’t shaved and scruff darkens his cheeks the way Chris remembers it always doing.  Chris wonders if there’s grey in his beard yet too.

 

“Hey,” Chris offers in reply.  His hands are shaking, heart still pounding, and he puts the magazine down ( _Variety_ ) to hide it.

 

“You ready?”  Darren grabs a set of keys from the kitchen counter.

 

“Yep.”  It’s almost true.

  
Darren nods shortly, as though he’s just made a decision about something he wasn’t quite sure of.

 

Briggs follows them outside and Chris frowns when Darren shuts the door with the dog on the front porch.

 

“You’re locking your dog outside?”  Chris asks.

 

“What?”  Darren looks down at where Briggs is sitting waiting for them at the edge of the walkway.  “Oh, he’s not mine.  Briggs lives across the way, but he likes me, so we hang out.”

 

“You hang out.”

 

“We’re buds,” Darren shrugs, like it makes all the sense in the world.  “Besides, he walks me to my car.”

 

Chris lifts an eyebrow.  But sure enough, Briggs follows them around to the driveway where a fairly beat up red pickup truck sits.  Chris wants to ask about that too, but doesn’t.  They get in the truck and pull away from the house, and Chris watches in the side view mirror as Briggs waits for them to start to turn a corner before trotting away from Darren’s house, towards what’s likely his own home.  Chris marvels at what Darren’s life seems to have become.

 

***

 

The drive into the city proper is oddly silent.  The last car Chris remembers Darren driving was the sleek, expensive Tesla.  He remembers how loud the stereo could get; loud enough to be heard over the roar of the wind as Darren barreled down the freeway towards the rising sun.  Chris wonders what happened to that car and what made Darren get the truck.  Did a friend want to get rid of it and Darren offered to take it off their hands?  Questions loom everywhere Chris turns.  Why did he leave?  Why San Francisco?  Why that house with the garden and the chickens?  The dog that isn’t his.

 

There are so many unknowns Chris can’t even get a handle on where to begin.  They sit thick and choking in his throat, fighting to get out all at once.  But he thinks he should have started with: “how are you?”  Years ago.  It feels like it’s too little too late now.

 

Instead, Chris gazes out of the window at the unfamiliar cityscape and pretends like he can’t smell Darren’s shampoo in the close confines of the truck.

 

***

 

Chris isn’t expecting a restaurant.  He’d thought a little music hall, or even a club.  Not a cozy, warmly lit restaurant with a distinctly Italian menu.  There isn’t exactly a stage, but a piano in the corner glimmers with promise under the lights.

 

“Saturday nights they have live music,” Darren explains as they approach the host’s stand.  “The owner’s a friend.  Let’s me come jam now and then.”  It’s been a minute and half and Darren has already smiled and waved to half a dozen people he clearly recognizes.  A tall man with an impressive beard even got a hug.  Chris shouldn’t be surprised.  Darren has always known everyone everywhere.

 

The maitre d’ leads them to a little table near the back, tucked away and as secluded as can be in such an open restaurant.  Chris isn’t sure if he’s grateful he’s not seated near the piano or not.

 

Chris goes to pull his chair out and Darren makes a strange move next to him.  Their arms bump awkwardly before Darren shifts away and Chris thinks that Darren almost tried to pull his chair out for him.  Sudden hysterical laughter threatens to bubble up in Chris’s throat.

 

“I’m getting a drink,” Darren says after they’ve been sitting at the table not looking at each other for a long moment.  “You want something?”

 

“Isn’t a waiter going to come?”  Chris looks around.  A few people are glancing surreptitiously at their table, but he can’t tell if they’re looking at him or Darren.  Or both of them together.  Or maybe it’s just the fact that Darren brought his guitar and the case is currently leaning against an extra chair.

 

“Yeah, but my buddy’s bartending tonight and I wanna say hi.”  Darren’s already stood up from his seat.  “He’ll probably comp at least one drink if I bat my eyelashes a few times.”  Darren winks and Chris blushes to his ears.  He hates that it shows so easily.

 

“Uhm, sure, thanks.  I’ll have-”

 

“A Tequila Sunrise,” Darren interrupts, grinning a little, and Chris’ heart pounds an extra beat.  It’s the first real smile Darren’s offered him since Chris showed up at his house.  And if Chris is being honest, it’s the first true smile he’s gotten from Darren in years.

 

Chris opens his mouth to respond – to protest even though that’s probably what he was going to get anyway – but Darren’s already ten feet from the table and he’s not going to yell out across the restaurant.  Darren draws enough attention just _being_ and Chris doesn’t need any grainy pictures of him to end up on the Internet.

 

He watches Darren slip between the tables until he reaches the bar, where he leans over the counter on his elbows, stretching up on his toes.  Chris wishes he could look away from the long line of Darren’s back and trim cut of his waist, but he’s never had the strength for that.  And time hasn’t offered it to him.  He’d once hoped, when everything was still broken open, raw and bleeding sluggishly, that the years would be cruel to Darren.  Chris had imagined a man with thinner hair and a thicker waist, wrinkles etched too deep for his age and dark circles taking away from the brilliance of his eyes.  But that clearly hadn’t happened.  And somehow that’s even more unfair than the way Darren seems more centered and balanced than ever before.

 

The bartender is a short man with a white smile and an easy sweep of brown hair.  And if the soft-eyed look he’s giving Darren while he reaches for a glass is another to go by, Darren really is batting those ridiculous lashes at him.  Chris wishes he could find some sort of resemblance between himself and the other man, but he can’t.  He tears his gaze away just as the bartender grins brightly at Darren and Darren touches his wrist in return.

 

Chris hasn’t had the right to jealousy in years, if ever.

 

The thunk of a glass getting set down in front of him jolts Chris out of his reverie.  Darren is leaning a hip against the table, sipping from a heavy glass.  The dark liquid inside is as familiar as the color of Darren’s eyes in the morning.

 

“You were always an old man when it came to your drinks,” Chris says it without thinking.

 

“Hey, it’s a fucking classic.”  Darren takes another slow sip and the crease in the corners of his eyes tells Chris he’s grinning into his drink.  Chris’ chest tightens and then eases.

 

“Are you going to sit down and eat or…?”  Chris lets the question trail off.

 

“Would that I could.  I’m up in minute here.”  Darren jerks his chin towards the piano that seems to be waiting for him.  “You go ahead and order something though.”  Darren leans over and grabs his guitar case.  “And make it something good.  I’m starving and I’m going to eat whatever’s left on your plate the second my set is over.”  He doesn’t quite wink, but there’s a glimmer in his eyes that’s almost familiar before he pulls away.

 

Chris sucks in a sharp breath.  Everything about this day feels half-remembered and partially recalled.  It’s as though Darren has the full script and he only has a few pages.  A few lines are there, but most of it is missing and Chris is left struggling to keep up with a Darren who already knows how the story is going to end.

 

When Darren takes the stage a slight murmur shifts through the restaurant.  It’s not the high, gasping squeals Chris has gotten used to over the years.  It’s a softer, subtler kind of pleasure that ripples from table to table.  If he wasn’t sure before, he knows now that the patrons are familiar with Darren, but it’s a different kind of recognition.  He’s a regular here, and so are they.  They don’t come to here him play; he plays for them when they’re both there.  Here, Darren and the crowd stand on more equal footing and Chris wonders what that’s like.  For Darren and for the audience.

 

The last time Chris saw Darren play was in front of three thousand screaming girls in a crowded, sweaty venue.  His remembrance of the night is strange and muted, like the truth of it is hidden behind a fog, even to him.  If he closes his eyes he can picture the sea of adoring faces angled up and they way the movement of all of their bodies looked like a wave.  He can see Darren down on the stage, small under the stage lights, but so incredibly perfect in that moment – the frenetic energy, the heartfelt passion.  It was who he was at the time.  Chris wishes he could have been closer to it, but it was impossible.

  
It’s different now.  The energy is lower, but no less powerful, just contained to the piano, and later, the stool and his guitar.  Chris watches with an openness he’d never been allowed before.  He tries not to worry about anyone catching him gazing up at the man on the stage, about photos making it online before the end of the song, but that’s a hard thing to let go of.

 

As Darren plays through his set – old, comfortable standards and a few new pop hits Chris recognizes from the radio – Chris wonders just what the hell Darren is doing here.  He knows Darren can fill a good-sized venue without trouble (or at least he could) and he figures Darren can’t need the money.

 

Chris lost track of Darren about a year after Glee ended.  Not, he realizes, that he tried very hard at all to keep in touch.  He’d been done with _everything_ the moment the last scene was shot and didn’t look back as he changed out of his wardrobe for the last time.  There had been a few cast parties at first; birthday get-togethers and vague attempts to keep the tenuous relationships going the way people expected them too.  But it hadn’t taken long before everyone began to slip away from each other.  Some moved across the country, others changed careers.  The distances grew with time and Chris certainly hadn’t tried as hard as he could have.  Somehow, he’d managed to keep the best friendship with Lea, probably because she understood, in some way, what he meant when he said that work had to come first.  They understood each other in that way at least.

 

And Darren.  Well, Darren had slipped away from him long before Glee ended.  Chris knows he’d opened his hand and let him go. 

 

On stage, Darren says a few charming words that gets the crowd laughing softly before playing the opening notes of _I Left My Heart In San Francisco_.  Chris’ fingers close tightly around the glass in his hand.  He’d heard that Darren had sold his house (or rented it to someone? Chris still doesn’t know the details) and he never found out where he moved too.  He hadn’t known that Darren left Los Angeles – except for the year he spent back in New York doing another show in Broadway.  (Chris couldn’t escape the news of that and he still remembers his ridiculous canned answers when reporters asked him if he was proud of his ex-costar.)  He supposes he shouldn’t be all that surprised.  Darren never really fit in Hollywood, not the way they needed him too.  It was probably a relief for him, to leave, but Chris wonders what the last reason was, the final impetus to pack up and go when most of his career hinged on the wheels and deals of LA.

 

Chris doesn’t really know what Darren’s been doing all these years and he certainly doesn’t know what brings Darren back to a little Italian restaurant in his home town, playing for a crowd of maybe seventy-five instead of thousands.  It might just be the joy of it.  Darren is _alive_ on stage, has always been.  He never lived for this the way Darren does, or did.  It means something to Darren – the music, the performance – that it’s never meant to Chris.  It hits Chris now in a way it never did before.  And maybe it should have, maybe he should have understood before.  Or tried to.  Chris is starting to realize how little he knew about anything after all.

  
The song changes, the piano grows heavier and Chris looks up.  Darren’s eyes are on him, dark under the lights.  Darren looks away quickly and Chris’ cheeks flush in a way that has little to do with alcohol.

 

It shouldn’t matter.  Chris knows how Darren’s eyes roam across the audience when he plays, when his eyes are open at all.  He likes to make the crowd feel like they’re all involved in that moment, and they are, in a way.  But it means Darren’s gaze keeps coming back to Chris’ table.  Chris doubts any of the songs that night are played for him, because of him.  Why would they be?  But he’s never heard Darren sing _Back to Black_ before.  There’s a rasp in his voice that Chris hasn’t heard before either, a power and sincerity.  He shivers in his chair and wishes he had something stronger than the drink still half-full in front of him.  Except he can’t – he has a long drive home ahead of him.

 

Darren plays a few more songs before his set is over and he steps way from the piano to more applause than a restaurant performer usually gets.  He’s grinning and a little sweaty at the temples, curls bouncing tightly.  The last time Chris was there when Darren walked off a stage he got a sweaty hug before he was pulled aside and kissed against some boxes.  It was wild and dangerous and didn’t matter, in the end.  This time Darren briefly presses a warm hand between his shoulder blades and looks down at the plate mostly untouched in front of Chris.

 

“Baked ziti?  Fuck yeah, man.”  Darren leans around him, grabbing the fork from the edge of the plate, and lifts a huge bite to his mouth.  Chris can smell the tomatoes in the sauce and the sharper tang of Darren’s sweat.

  
Darren sits down in the chair next to Chris instead of across the table and his guitar case knocks against Chris’ leg.

 

“Are you done with this?” Darren asks as he’s already pulling the plate towards himself.

 

“Yeah, go for it.” Chris waves at the plate.

 

“Thanks.  Told you I was fucking starving.  Haven’t eaten since before you showed up.”

 

Chris has a sudden flashback of a day when neither of them had to film.  He thinks it was sometime in the third season of the show and they wasted the day in Darren’s apartment eating their way through his cupboards.  He’d gone home with a headache and so deliriously happy that it didn’t matter.

 

“We’ll get out of here in a minute,” Darren says around his mouthful.  “I know you’ve got a long way to go home.  Don’t want you to be driving sleepy.”

 

Chris nods, pushing the remains of his drink away.  There’s no room for even the consideration that Chris might stay the night at Darren’s place.  He’s not sure he’d even say yes if the offer were on the table.

 

True to his word, Darren inhales the remainder of Chris’ dinner in minutes.  He shakes his head when Chris reaches for his wallet.

 

“Don’t worry about it.  It’s part of the deal for playing here.  And I was right.”

 

“About?”

 

Darren’s eyes twinkle mischievously.  “Your drink was free.”

 

The short drive back to Darren’s place isn’t quite as quiet as the ride to the restaurant had been.  Darren points out a few sights along the way.  A bar he likes.  A little art gallery run by a woman named Valerie who just married her girlfriend of fourteen years.  A tattoo parlor he stumbled into one night when he’d just moved into his house.  He was drunk off his nuts and the only reason he didn’t walk out with a terrible tattoo is that the owner is a decent human being and sent him home in a cab.  Chris wants to ask more about that night; wants to ask why Darren was so drunk and what tattoo he wanted.  But he bites his lip and looks out the window instead.

  
They pull up the long driveway to Darren’s house and the lights on in the windows make the home look so fucking charming Chris’ stomach hurts with it.

 

“Well,” Darren says.  “It was good to see you.”

 

“Yeah, it was.”  Chris unlocks his car but doesn’t open the door yet.  He wants to leave and he doesn’t.

 

“Uhm, don’t be a stranger?”  Darren’s shoved his hands in his pockets and his shoulders are hunched in.

  
“Are you – do you ever come down to LA?”  Chris asks.  A furrow draws between Darren’s eyebrows and his lips thin.  Chris knows he’s said something wrong, but don’t know what.

 

“Yeah, sometimes,” Darren’s voice has gone flat the way it was when Chris first showed up and it makes Chris’ skin crawl.  “I…I play gigs now and then.”

 

 _Oh_.  Chris swallows, shamed.  Again.  He hasn’t realized; he hadn’t thought to ask.  Not that Darren ever called him to let him know that he was around.  He thinks he should have known anyway, that someone should have told him.  But maybe they didn’t for a reason.

 

“All right, well.  I’ll uh, I’ll see you around?”

 

“Sure.”  Darren takes a few steps back from Chris’ car, towards his home.

 

“Bye,” Chris offers as he gets in.  He shuts the door before he can hear Darren’s response, but he can see Darren’s lips move and his hand sketch a wave.

 

The house disappears in the review mirror and Chris drives home thinking about the songs Darren didn’t play that night, the ones Chris didn’t realize he was expecting until he didn’t hear them.  And he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to listen to Adele the same again.


	3. What It Might Have Been

Chris spends Sunday running errands and taking care of the things he’s been neglecting for too long.  He’d finally gotten home from San Francisco around three in the morning and crashed until past 11am.  It hadn’t just been the need for sleep that kept him in bed that late. 

 

After Chris drags himself out of the safety of sheets that smell of him and him alone and into clean clothes, he picks up his dry-cleaning even though he has people who’ll do that for him.  He goes to the grocery store and buys more than he knows he’ll eat before it goes bad.  He could invite some friends over, cook a big meal, and have a long overdue get-together.  Halfway through checkout Chris realizes he’s not going to do that; he can’t think of enough people he wants to cook for, even if the linens are clean and pressed.  He stops at the pet store and gets Brian a new toy even though Brian is 17 now and spends most of the time sleeping.  Chris fills up his gas tank and takes out the trash and washes the windows and he knows all he’s doing is trying to keep busy enough to not think too much about the day before.

 

He doesn’t want to think about Darren.  He doesn’t want to remember the shock on Darren’s face when he first saw him, or the disappointment that flashed in his eyes every time Chris said something that turned out to be the wrong thing.  It was like failing a test he didn’t even know he was taking.  And he doesn’t want to think about how good Darren looked, how the sight of him, even after all these years, made his heart flutter and his palms sweat.  It shouldn’t be like that.  It wasn’t fucking fair.  Time should have made it easier.  But it didn’t.  It almost made it worse, the fierce longing that came with the sight of Darren’s tanned skin and strong arms in that tank top; the easy movement of his hips and the power in his hands.  It’s the thing he’s never been able to control.

 

The world Chris had carefully crafted around himself, for himself, feels like it’s starting to crack at the edges, and all because of Darren.  How is it always like that?

 

The sun is setting and Chris has nothing left he can do the pass the time before he can crawl back into bed at a non-embarrassingly early hour.  He knows he won’t be able to sit and write and doesn’t even try.  He’s too antsy, to jittery.  He’s crawling out of his skin and almost feels like he wants to go for a drive.  Instead, he grabs his cell phone and makes a call.

 

“Christopher,” Lea answers on the second ring.  “You can’t have dated and dumped another idiot since last week.”

 

“Very funny,” Chris rolls his eyes.

 

“I thought so.  Well…”

 

Chris hears a hundred prompting questions in the one word.  He doesn’t want to answer any of them.  “Well…what?”

 

“How was it?”

 

“It was fine,” Chris hedges.

 

“Come on, you gotta give me more than that,” Lea pushes and Chris pictures her settling down in a big cozy chair, ready for a story.  “Tell me everything.”

 

“Lea, this is ridiculous.  We didn’t even really talk.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Maybe because I was so fucking surprised to see him after what?  Three years?  Four?  That I couldn’t even say anything.”  Chris rubs self-consciously at his neck as he paces around his living room.  Brian watches him from his perch on the couch.

  
“You should.”

 

“What?”  Chris passes by the mantle where framed photos of friends sit arranged.  He knows who’s missing without looking.

 

“Say something to him.”

 

“Like it’s that easy.”

  
“Isn’t it?”

 

Chris thinks of the charming little house and the resonance of piano and the plate of baked ziti.

 

“You should have told me,” he says and it comes out sharper than Chris intended.  “Where I was going and that it would be _him_.” 

 

Chris is suddenly angry, angry at Lea for forcing him face to face with someone he hasn’t seen in years, angry with Darren for being that person.  It burns in his gut and spreads hot through his veins – the anger, the rankling unfairness, and he knows that’s wrong too.  But he can’t stop it.

 

“You should have told me.”

 

Lea doesn’t say anything for a long moment and Chris pictures her with her small hand splayed wide across her belly, searching for the right set of words that won’t set him off even more.  She takes a breath Chris can hear.  “Would you have gone if you’d known?”

 

“That’s not the point.”

 

“Isn’t it?  Tell me the truth.  Would you still have gone?”

 

“I…” Chris bites his lip hard.  The truth is even now the sound of Darren’s name brought up in casual conversation makes him jolt, makes him remember the way the word use to roll off his tongue.  The truth is that no matter how hard Chris tried to shove the shards of Darren out of his life once everything fell apart for good, bits and pieces remained.  They’re scattered through his house in ways Chris can’t get rid – frames that once held different pictures, remembered passages from books he was given as presents, recipes he was taught by gentle hands and can’t forget.  They lie settled under his skin, nestled deep into his bones.  He couldn’t claw them out if he tried.

 

“No,” Chris admits and it tastes bitter on his tongue, like another broken promise, but one he never even knew he made.

 

“You’re an idiot,” Lea chastises and Chris is glad he can’t see the disappointment that’s so apparent in her voice.

 

“Yeah, I’m getting that.”  Chris has never been good at admitting when he’s on the wrong side of anything.  “Why did you send me to him?” Chris asks.  “What was the point?  It’s not like he wants to see me either.  He could have come to LA anytime, you know.  Why are you putting this – whatever this is – all on me?  He could have called me at anytime.”

 

“You changed your phone number,” Lea says and Chris abruptly stops pacing.

 

“I-” Chris had forgotten that.  “Oh.  Well, he could have gotten it from you, or anyone else, if he’d wanted to.”  He tries not to wonder who else he never gave his new number too.  The decision to change his number had been a spur of the moment one when

 

“Chris, I say this with love, but I really don’t think you have any idea what Darren wants.”

 

That makes Chris down on the floor.  She’s not wrong; Lea rarely is about these sorts of things.  It’s kind of infuriating, actually.  Chris used to think he knew what Darren wanted, what made him tick.  He’d once thought he knew what Darren dreamt about for the future and what made his heart beat.  But now, with too many years behind him, he’s pretty sure he never really knew Darren at all, not in the ways that mattered.  Shame gnaws at his belly.

 

“I…” Chris starts and doesn’t know how to finish.

 

“Chris, sweetheart.  It’s not like you can’t fix this.  You know where he lives now.”

 

Chris hangs up after a couple of words of goodbye.  Yes, he knows where Darren is, but he doesn’t know what’s left to fix.  He drops the phone to the floor.  He wants to talk to Darren – really talk to him – but he doesn’t have Darren’s number either.  And what’s left of his pride keeps him from asking Lea for it.  It doesn’t really matter; it’s not the sort of conversation he thinks they should have over the phone, if it’s a conversation Darren is even willing to have with him.

 

Brian leaps off the couch with as much grace as a 17-year-old cat can muster and pushes himself onto Chris’ lap.  Chris scritches behind Brian’s soft ears and sighs.

 

“What would you do?”

 

Brian looks him in eyes, meows loudly, and then curls up in his lap to sleep.

 

“Yeah, I thought so.”  But Chris can’t nap this away and doesn’t think he wants to.

 

***

 

It takes two weeks for Chris to go back.  It’s not completely that he’s avoiding Darren; San Francisco is far enough away that’s it not exactly an easy trip to make by car too often.  He could take a flight, but that might draw more attention to his whereabouts than he’s comfortable with.  Chris doesn’t delude himself to think he’s followed anywhere and everywhere he goes.  Not anymore.  The fanaticism continues to fade as the years removed from Glee stretch ever longer.

 

So he gets back into the car, grabs the biggest cup of coffee that fits in his drink holder, and drives north.  It feels longer than the first time, probably because he knows exactly where he’s driving, and towards _whom_.  The knowledge changes things, changes almost everything.  It doesn’t help that he’s operating on the mere hope that Darren will be home when he gets there, and not out somewhere living the life he’s built for himself in the Bay.  The life he’s built without him.  And Chris doesn’t really want to end up sitting on Darren’s doorstep waiting for him to get home.

  
But the old truck is parked outside the house when Chris crests the top of the long driveway and Chris lets out an exhalation of relief.  His hands tremble against the steering wheel as he pulls to a stop, gravel crunching under his tires.

 

This time Chris recognizes the bark that comes from behind the house when he knocks on the front door.  _Briggs_ , he thinks with something of a smile twitching his mouth.  Chris isn’t expecting Darren to answer, so he’s not surprised when he’s right.  He doesn’t bother knocking twice before making his way around the side of the house.  He catches a few more rosemary bushes planted between the roses and the lilacs.  The scent of them is heady and intoxicating.

 

Darren is in the big back yard again, but this time instead of pulling eggs from the chicken coop, he’s standing next to what’s clearly a compost heap.  He’s got a shovel in his hands and he’s turning the earth over and over again.  It’s a gorgeous, sunny autumn day and Darren is once again wearing a tank top that shows off the breadth of his shoulders and the expanse of his chest.  The steady, rhythmic movement has his muscles flexing and rippling under smooth, tanned skin and even from this distance Chris can see the freckles on his shoulders.

 

It hits him with a suddenly clarity, taking his breath away.  He wants Darren, fiercely and completely.  Still.  Whatever else is gone, that remains.

 

He watches Darren turn the compost over, bringing the more broken-down earth up from the bottom and mixing it in with the newer, less decomposed dirt at the top.  Darren’s thighs flex beneath the thin denim of another pair of jeans.  This time, with the gut-punch of shock from two weeks ago him having dissipated slightly, Chris notices now the way Darren seems to favor his right leg, just a bit.  He wouldn’t have caught it if he weren’t intimately familiar with the way Darren moves.  Chris adds it to the growing list of things he wants to ask about, but can’t.  Not yet.

 

Briggs barks again, drawing Darren’s attention to Chris presence.  And this time when Darren looks up and over at him, instead of shock passing over his features, there’s a flash of a smile and something else, something deeper, that Chris can’t name.

 

Chris lifts his hand in a wave as Briggs trots over to him.  The big mutt sniffs at his other hand and then his shoes, before turning and making his way back over to Darren, who pats his side fondly and firmly.

 

“Hey,” Darren says, digging the shovel into the pile of earth and leaning into it.  Dirt streaks his forearms and there’s a smear across his forehead like he wiped sweat away with unwashed hands.  He’s utterly gorgeous in a way Chris doesn’t think he could ever get used to.

 

Chris walks towards him, moving between rows of vegetables.  He doesn’t know what they all are, but he can pick out tomatoes and onions, rhubarb and snap peas.  He wants to know who taught Darren how to grow these things, and why he does it.

 

“I’m glad you’re home,” he says cautiously.  And it’s true.  He hadn’t told Lea he was coming back here this day, so she can’t have said anything to Darren.

 

Darren shrugs, but it’s just a tic shy of true casualness.  “I usually am.”  It’s not self-deprecating in the least and Chris can’t help but wonder how else Darren fills his days when he’s not taking care of his garden or his chickens or playing a few tunes for a restaurant.  He pictures Darren relaxing in that chair in his living room and has to bite away his smile.

 

Chris stops several feet away from Darren.  Looking around, there’s a wrought iron bench tucked under a tree that looks like it would seat two perfectly.  And farther back a shed with sun-faded paint sits with the door partially open.

 

“I wasn’t sure,” he continues.  “I mean, I didn’t know.  If you would be, that is.  I couldn’t call you to set up a – a time to come over.  Which was really dumb of me.  You could have been busy or had someone else over or something.   Or, shit, you might not even want me to come over like this.  I didn’t even think…” His tongue feels thick and stupid in his mouth.  It’s worse than how he feels when he tries to sit down and write his book these days.

 

“I do,” Darren interjects.  Chris can’t tell if his cheeks are pink because he’s blushing or because of the heat of his exertion.  “I mean, you can come over.  It’s fine.  I – I want you to.  If you want to.  It’s just…surprising, I guess, but it’s good to see you again.  Especially so soon.  I mean, after, well.  You know.”  Darren trails off, kicks at the dirt beneath his boots.  Chris can see his chest rise and fall with a deep breath and he’s glad he’s not the only one who doesn’t quite seem to know what to say.

 

“Uhm,” Chris scratches awkwardly at his neck and watches as Briggs pads over to what Chris is pretty sure is _his spot_ beneath a tree and lies down.  “Can I help you with anything?”  He asks, even though he has no idea how he could possibly be useful on Darren’s little San Francisco backyard farm.  “I don’t-”

 

 _I don’t know what I’m doing_.  Is what he wants to say.  _I don’t have a plan.  I don’t know anything right now._

 

Darren cocks his head to the side and a smile quirks his mouth.  It’s so familiar Chris’ heart flips.  “Do you know anything about compost?”  Darren asks.

 

“Nope,” Chris shakes his head.

 

“What about chickens?”

 

“Only that they’re delicious roasted with a little bit of seasoning.”  Chris thinks it might be okay to joke a little.

 

Laughter escapes Darren’s lips like he can’t help it.  “Don’t you say dare say that around my girls.  They’ll stop laying out of protest.”

 

“What do you do with all of the eggs?  You can’t possibly eat them all.  And you shouldn’t.  Cholesterol isn’t something you can let get out of hand.  Not at your advancing age.”  Chris chances another quip.  There was a time, once, when they teased each other about everything.  He misses that – the closeness, the familiarity, the ease of a conversation that didn’t fear accidentally hurting someone’s feelings over every little comment.

 

Darren glances over at him from beneath those ridiculous lashes.  “I thought you said you didn’t know anything about chickens?”

 

“Well, I might have looked a few things up.”  Chris shrugs as nonchalantly as he can, but Darren presses his lips together and Chris knows that Darren doesn’t buy it.

 

Truth is, Chris spent a grey Wednesday afternoon on Google reading up on the care and keeping of chickens in the city.

 

“You want to meet them?”

 

“Who?”  For a moment Chris worries he missed a topic change.

 

“The chickens.”  Darren drops the shovel to the mound of compost and takes a few steps towards Chris.  “Come on.”

 

Another time, in another place, Darren would have taken his hand and pulled him along.  But this day Darren just moves past him, not quite brushing against him.  Chris flexes his empty fingers at his side as he follows.

 

The chicken coop is kind of huge, more than enough room for the three hens Chris can see moving around.  It’s made of a reddish wood and shaped almost like a miniature house, tall enough Darren can duck in to grab the eggs.  Chris can see how Darren made sure it was elevated properly to avoid rats and standing water after a rain.  The way it lets in plenty of light and how the run is covered to protect the hens from the weather.  Chris thinks Brian would be terribly jealous if he ever saw this thing.

 

Darren leads him over to the gate.  The hens shuffle over as though they’re expecting to be fed.

 

“All right,” Darren says and he points towards a chicken with a light brown, almost golden, feathers.  “This one is Sunny.”

 

“Sunny.”

 

“Yeah, like sunny side up.”  Darren is grinning all of a sudden, bright and open and Chris can’t look away.

 

“Oh god.”

 

“And this one here is Bennie, like Eggs Benedict.”  Darren gestures to a white chicken off in the corner.   “And over there is Lottie, which I admit is a stretch from omelet, but these are my girls.”  The third has dark feathers Chris would bet his house that Darren picked three differently feathered chickens so he could easily tell them apart.

 

“Darren, you named your chickens after breakfast.”

  
“Well, what else would you name them?”  The look Darren gives him makes Chris wonder if Darren’s just fucking with him or not.  His eyes are glinting in the sun, crinkling at the corner where he’s squinting against the light.  They’re standing so close their shoulders almost brush.  “And I give a lot of the eggs to the neighbors, mostly.  They have a big family – four kids.  Sometimes I join up with another neighbor down the road and set up a little stand at the farmer’s market on Saturdays.  Turns out it’s surprisingly easy to grow more food than you can eat yourself.”

 

“Oh, that’s…” Chris trails off.

 

It’s charming, is what it is.  It’s familiar.  It’s solid proof of the life Darren has made for himself up here in the Bay.  He must have friends Chris doesn’t know about, people he cares for and trusts, people he spends times with and shares his life with.  Lovers, too.  Chris’s chest aches sharply with the thought.  There must be restaurants Darren takes his dates, movies they’ve seen.  Surely there are songs that have played on the radio while he’s driving in his truck that he associates with a particular someone.  Chris swallows down a burning rush of bile.

 

“That’s very nice of you,” Chris finishes lamely.

 

“Eh, they’re good people.  You’d like them.”  Chris assumes Darren’s talking about his neighbors, but he can’t help but wonder if any of them have sat in that cozy chair in the living room, or if they’ve shared Darren’s bed.

 

“I’m sure I would.”

 

There’s an awful, unintended pause and Chris realizes he’s somehow revealed too much.  But he wants to understand what Darren’s life is like now, except he doesn’t know how to begin.  Maybe because he doesn’t know where things ended.  Chris can see Darren’s long fingers curling through the chicken wire of the coop, almost as though he’s trying to ground himself.  He can hear the intake of Darren’s breath.

 

“Uhm, so.  I was serious, before.”  Chris rubs at the outside of his thigh to give his hands something to do beyond reaching for Darren’s.  “I could help, if you needed it.  I mean, I didn’t…have a plan or anything.  I just.”

 

_I just wanted to see you._

 

Darren’s eyes are sharp on his face and Chris doesn’t know what he’s looking for.  He can feel the weight of that gaze as it moves over his features.  Chris tries not to blush and fails.

 

“I’ve got some bags of mulch in the shed that I was going to use out front,” Darren offers.  “I wouldn’t say no to a couple extra hands.”

  
“Great.”  Chris smiles and the one Darren gives him in return is blinding.

 

It takes about five minutes into the project for Chris to realize that Darren didn’t really need his help with this at all.  All they’re doing is bringing mulch from the shed and spreading it around the plants and bushes that line the fence at front of the house.  Not that complicated at all.  Darren probably could have done it just as fast and just as easily without Chris getting in the way.  But Chris isn’t going to let the opportunity to slip from his fingers.

 

The bags are actually pretty heavy and Chris can’t help but watch the way Darren’s biceps bulge when he hefts a bag up into his arms.  Freckles stand out on his bare shoulders and whatever he’s been doing with his life these last five years it’s done wonders for his body.  Not that Chris would ever tell him that; he remembers how Darren doesn’t give a shit one way or the other.  Unless that’s changed, though Chris doubts it.  Darren only takes the bag a few feet from the shed to where an old red wheelbarrow is waiting.  Chris never once imagined Darren owning anything like this, and yet somehow it fits better than bow ties and Teslas ever did.

 

“It’s easier to shovel it out this way,” Darren explains as he rips the bag open with a pair of scissors and dumps the whole thing into the wheelbarrow.  Chris nods like he understands; he’s just going to follow Darren’s lead with this one.  He has no idea what he’s doing.

 

The old wooden handles are rough against Chris’ palms and it’s actually pretty difficult to navigate 30 pounds of mulch along the flagstone pathway to the front of Darren’s home.  But he manages to almost dump the whole thing to the ground only once.  He calls that a kind of victory.

 

Darren hands him one of the shovels he brought from the back and a pair of gloves.  Chris isn’t wearing gardening clothes, not even close.  His shoes are Converse and his slim jeans are more expensive than they’re probably worth.  He dressed for style that morning, not for dirt and chicken coops and mulch.  But those are the things keeping him in Darren’s company that afternoon, and it’s not like he doesn’t have a closet of overpriced pants and shoes at his disposal.

 

“All right, so it’s pretty fucking simple.  Here’s what we’re going to do.”

 

Chris listens raptly as Darren shows him how all they’re doing is spreading the bark chips around the bushes and plants, but not too close to the roots, trunks, and stems.  They don’t want to overpower anything; the point isn’t to make the plants fight harder for survival.  Darren explains the purpose of the mulch – how it helps maintain the moisture in the dirt while keeping the weeds out.  How, as the bark breaks down, it actually adds nutrients to the soil.  That, at least, isn’t lost on Chris.

 

He looses himself in the work.  It’s not that physically strenuous – just shoveling and spreading bark chips around.  Dancing for the show was one thing; the rehearsals could be brutal.  Not necessarily because the steps were hard, but because the hours were so long.  But this is different.  He’s just not used to it.  Even with the gloves on his palms grow a little tender.  And his lower back started twinging half and hour into it.  But it’s not that bad.

 

And Darren is there, working steadily beside him.  They don’t say much, not once they fall into an easy rhythm.  It’s comfortable in a way Chris didn’t expect it could be, but when he thinks about it, it’s not that surprising.  After all, they always did work well together, ever since the beginning.  It’s something he was always grateful for, that working with Darren was easy in a way it wasn’t with anyone else.  And hasn’t been since.

 

When they run out of mulch in the wheelbarrow, they take turns getting more; Darren’s got a long fence line and Chris insists on helping him finish the whole thing.  Dirt’s already worked its way into the knees of his jeans from kneeling in front of the shrubs and bushes and he’s sure there’s some smeared across his forehead from when he pushed his hair back.  He honestly doesn’t care.  The work is calming, even relaxing.  Briggs lies nearby, napping on the heated flagstones.  The sun is bright and warm above him and the ground is soft where he’s kneeling. 

 

Chris glances over just as Darren is digging the shovel into the pile of mulch.  He blinks slowly.  The worn denim of his jeans is pulled tight over the heavy curve of his ass.  As he bends into the movement, the hem of his tank top rides up, exposing a strip of smooth skin across his lower back that’s just as tanned as the rest of him.  Chris’ throat goes painfully dry.  Darren starts to turn back in Chris’ direction and Chris jerks his gaze back to the ground in front of him.  He feels hot all over and takes a slow, steadying breath.

 

The scent of the rosemary is heady, almost overpowering when the gentle breeze abates for a moment, allowing the fragrance to rise up all around him.  Darren has the stuff everywhere and Chris wants to know why.  What is it about rosemary that Darren wants to keep nearby?  It’s pretty – especially when it blooms those little purple buds - but it’s not as if it’s the most beautiful plant he could have.  So why?  Wild roses and sweet lilacs accent the deeper scent and Chris almost wants to stretch out on his back between the rosemary and the dark pink roses and close his eyes.  He doesn’t.  Not yet.

 

As the afternoon wears on, Chris can’t help but notice the way Darren starts favoring his right leg again, the way he had those weeks ago.  He didn’t ask before, feeling to unsure about everything; he can’t hold it back this time, even if he’s still so unsure.

 

“Are you okay?”  He asks when Darren comes back from inside the house, carrying a couple bottles of water with him.

 

Darren shoots him a question look while handing over one of the bottles.  “What?”

 

“I mean, your leg.  It’s – does it hurt?  It looks like it does.”

 

“Oh.”  Darren looks down at his right knee as though it will tell him something.  “Yeah. It’s not so bad though.”  He shrugs and it’s the same not-quite-careless gesture Chris recognizes from himself.  There’s also the twitch in Darren’s cheek that tells him the truth.

 

“What happened?”  Chris sits back on his heels, stretching his back a bit and looking up at Darren, who’s standing near the wheelbarrow.

 

“Rehearsal, however long ago.  Took a bad step and slipped.  Easy as that.” Darren waves his hand back at the memory.

 

Chris remembers now, how Darren fell, and how worried everyone was.  He wasn’t there that day, but they called him immediately to let him know what happened.  (It only hits him now what exactly that meant).  And someone – he can’t remember whom anymore – texted him a photo of Darren pouting on a chair with a giant icepack wrapped around his propped-up knee.  Chris probably still has that photo somewhere.  Maybe.

 

“And it still hurts?”

 

“Eh.  I don’t think I ever let it heal properly.”  Darren leans down a bit, touches a few fingers to his knee.  “We were busy, you know?  In the middle of everything.  I couldn’t just call in and say I couldn’t come to rehearsal, or go to the things I’d already signed up for.”

 

“Uh, yeah, you could have.”  Chris has worked through some pretty awful illnesses and a couple of painful injuries, but a bad knee feels like something else entirely.  Maybe it’s because it’s _Darren’s_ knee.

 

“I wasn’t going to let anyone down by not showing up.”

 

Chris can’t tell if that’s a dig or not so he lets it go.  “Taking care of yourself isn’t letting anyone down.”

 

Darren levels a long look at him and Chris has not idea what he’s trying to piece together.

 

“It’s fine most of the time.  It really only acts up when I twist it around too much.  My doctor says I’m probably going to end up with arthritis in it at some point, but honestly, who the fuck isn’t?  It can’t tell if it’s going to rain, but I think it’s getting there.”  Darren grins at him and Chris knows he would actually find that useful.

 

But the thought of Darren in twenty or thirty years with a slight, pained limp makes Chris’ stomach knot up.

 

“My back,” he blurts out.

 

“What about it?”  Darren cocks his head.

 

“It hurts too, sometimes.”  Chris doesn’t quite know how to describe the bright flash of pain that spikes through his core now and again, sucking the very breath from his body and making him stop in his tracks.  “They keep telling me to start yoga or something.”  He probably should.  It might be good for him in other ways.

 

“Or you could stop hanging upside down from things.”  Darren lifts an eyebrow at him as he takes a drink of his water.

 

“How is that any different?”

 

Darren grins his acknowledgement.  “We’re getting old, aren’t we?”

 

“A little more every day.”

 

Chris looks up into Darren’s face, sees the lines around his mouth and the crinkles in the corner of his eyes.  With the sun behind him, the grey in his hair glint in the light and Chris swears he can see hints of steel in the three-day scruff along Darren’s jaw.  He still wants to ask about the scar on Darren’s chin that’s not quite hidden by beard.  But it’s not just the superficial changes that mark the passage of time.  Chris can see it in the way Darren carries himself.  There’s maturity in the set of his shoulders and confidence in easy movement of his hips.  The way his hands still follow his words.  Chris wonders when he found that.

 

 _How have you been?_   The question is right there, heavy on his tongue, but he can’t force it out.  No matter how much he wants to, he’s not sure if he could handle the answer.  He feels broken open a little, exposed under the sun and Darren’s stare.  Asking the question and waiting for the inevitable answer would only crack off a few more pieces of him, pieces he’s not ready to let go of yet.

  
So Chris forces his eyes away and gets back to work.  They don’t have much left to go and he’s grateful for the distraction.  Sweat beads along his hairline and under his arms and the back of his shirt slings to his skin, but it feels good.   Next to him, Darren hums a few notes of a song, but doesn’t sing.  Chris misses that too.

 

When they’re done, Chris stands up, tugs off the gloves, and wipes his hands on his jeans.  Satisfaction rolls through him as he looks down at the long stretch of newly mulched garden.  It’s the most work he’s done in a long time.  Sure, his books and scripts are work but this, this is viscerally real and true in a way those have never felt.

  
Darren bumps into his shoulder, surveys their handiwork.  “Thanks, man.  Looks fucking great.”

 

“Yeah.”  The plants look like they’ve had some professional attention, not that they looked bad before.

 

“Couldn’t have done it without you.”

 

Chris appreciates the lie because Darren didn’t have to offer it.  “Yeah, you could have.”

 

“All right,” Darren concedes, softly.  “But I wouldn’t have wanted to.”

 

Chris breathes in slowly – smells the dirt and sweat and rosemary.  He wants to lean further into Darren’s warmth, even though he’s not the least bit chilled.  He wants to jump into his car and drive south without looking back.  He never wants to leave.

 

They were good together, once.   He remembers.  They were close.  They were happy, in their own way.  The only way they could be.  He wants that again, but he needs more.  He wants what they had and better.  He longs the things he denied himself, and the parts Darren denied himself too.  He wants the things they kept from each other.

 

But Chris doesn’t even know where to start, only that he has to.  Whatever the last few weeks have been, that much as become clear.

 

“Do you want to get something to eat or…” he lets the question trail off, to give Darren an out.  But Darren doesn’t need one.

 

“Oh, I…uhm.”  Darren looks away, cheek twitching, and Chris’ stomach clenches.  “I’ve actually got plans tonight.”

 

Chris’ heart drops to his dirty shoes before he can take a breath.  “Oh, yeah, no.  Of course you do.  I mean.”  Darren must have plans all the time.  Chris remembers what his schedule was like all those years ago.  “And I just keep…barging in and you must have plans.  I didn’t mean to keep you from them.  I’ll just-” Chris pulls away, to hide the disappointment and embarrassment he knows is bleeding across his face.  But Darren grabs his elbow, forces him to turn back.

 

“Hey, no, I mean.  Yeah, I have plans tonight, but like.  You’re not – you didn’t interrupt anything.  Coming here.  You haven’t been.”  Darren is gazing up at him those huge eyes of his, silently begging him to understand something.  “I like having you here, okay?”

 

 _Oh_.

 

“But I really do have some stuff tonight.”  Darren chews on his lip and Chris chooses to believe Darren is disappointed too.  “I’d totally invite you along, but…”

 

Chris waves his hand around. “No, god no.  It’s fine.”  There’s no way he’s going to third or fourth or even seventh wheel whatever’s going on tonight.

 

“It’s a long drive home,” Darren says and Chris knows now _he’s_ the one stalling.

 

“Yeah, but I’m getting used to it.”  Chris offers up a small smile.  “Get a lot of reading on tape done.”

 

There’s an awkward pause, but not as horrible as the one from earlier.

 

“I should get going anyway.  Brian’s probably wondering where I went.”

 

Darren smiles at the mention of the cat.  “How is Brian?” He asks as they start to put all of the gardening tools away.

 

“He’s fine, getting old though.”

 

“I bet.”  Darren was there the day after Chris brought Brian home and not for the first time Chris wonders if Darren misses the ornery creature, or if he’s missed in return.

 

“The little black cat I saw last time, she yours?  Or another neighbor’s pet you’ve stolen.”

 

Darren laughs.  “That one’s all mine.  Her name’s Juniper.  But I mostly call her ‘get off my pillow.’”  Chris grins.  Juniper looks like the kind of cat that claims the most comfortable spot in any room.

 

They lock up the shed and Darren bends down to scratch Briggs all along his back.  The dog gets up and follows them out to Chris’ car.  When Chris opens the door, Darren rests his hand on it.

 

“So, I’ll see you again?”

 

Chris knows this is the moment he should make plans with Darren – real, definite plans.  He should ask for his number and give his in return.  But he nods and the moment passes.

 

“Yep, definitely.”

 

“Great.”  Darren lifts his hand from the door and steps back.  His hand drifts down and comes to rest along the scruff of Briggs’ neck.

 

Chris waves to them both through the window before starting up the car and pulling out down the long driveway.  He watches Darren disappear in the rearview mirror again and finds he hates the sight of it.

 

When Chris looks back at his hands on the steering wheel, there’s dirt still caked under his nails.


	4. The End of All Your Lines

Over the next week, Chris goes out for drinks with some friends and ignores the repeated calls from his agent and publisher.  They’re concerned about his lack of progress.  So is he.  Instead, he grabs coffee with Rob and pretends like it hasn’t been way too fucking long since they last saw each other.  Rob takes one look at him and Chris knows that he knows that he’s in for a very long discussion.  He isn’t disappointed.  Chris drags himself home hours and hours later with a throat raw from conversation and a brain too full and completely blank at the same time.

 

Chris has never been very good at listening when people – especially those who are the closest to him – tell him when he’s fucked up.  And Rob’s never shied away from being completely blunt with him, even when it’s about how he thinks Chris has been wasting the last five years and how Chris is a stubborn asshole who might have brought some (or more) of this on himself.  But Chris knows Rob does it because he loves him and wants the best for him, and that almost makes it worse.  He didn’t miss the lack of surprise – or the pity – on Rob’s face when he told him how Darren’s been living in San Francisco all this time.

 

It’s almost midnight when Chris gets home from his impromptu therapy session with Rob, but he can’t even begin to think about sleep.  He feels wound up tight and all the errands he’d run to burn off the energy have already been done, or it’s too late for them anyway.  When he crashes on the couch, he opens his laptop the way he always does, but the sight of that too small Word document, with that taunting blinking cursor, just makes him angry.  This is supposed to be what he does, what he’s good at.  This is supposed to be what he _is_.  Writer.  Author.  And he can’t even do that anymore.  He wishes he knew why whatever inspiration he used to possessive seems to have bled away.

 

In a compulsive burst, Chris prints out every single page of what he’s managed to write and spreads the papers all across his living room floor.  He sits back on his heels and looks down at what’s supposed to be his next big book.  Displayed this way – real, tangible – Chris is struck by how little there is.  Months of work and so little to actually show for.  Chris sucks in a breath and feels like his own guts are on display, laid out for all to see and sneer at.  Brian slides past his hip and sniffs delicately at a page.

 

“That’s all there is,” Chris whispers, running a hand down Brian’s back.  “That’s all.”

 

The failure burns in the back of his throat.

 

Chris falls asleep on the couch with his failure spread out before him and Brian warm behind his knees.  He dreams of a vast golden farm.  He feels calm, relaxed, with something like the sun on his face.  There’s a fence in the distance – long and wooden, hand hewed, with a gate in the middle.  He knows instinctively that he has to get through that gate and he starts to walk towards it.  He thinks the field is wheat and the thin stalks slip through his fingers.  But the more he walks, the further the gate seems to get, and the faster he walks, the longer the distance becomes.  He breaks into a run, wheat stalks whipping at his skin, and the gate disappears in the setting sun.

 

Chris wakes with a gasp.  There’s sweat on his forehead and it’s hours until sunrise, but he won’t be sleeping again.

 

In the morning, Chris goes to the local nursery and picks up a little potted Blue Echeveria.  The boy with the pretty green eyes who approaches him in the house plants section tells him they’re easy to take care of and safe for pets.  He looks a little like Jamie, with his soft adoring eyes and his mess of brown hair – his easy smiles.  Chris could get this boy’s phone number in a heartbeat, but it would sit useless in his contacts.  He thinks about the set of keys left on his kitchen table and the old bottle cap he’d pulled off the ring and thrown away and smiles politely at the boy, thanking him for assistance.  When he leaves the nursery, a curly-haired man hefts a couple of bags of compost into a customer’s truck and Chris knows it’s not the resemblance to Jamie that kept him from getting the green-eyed boy’s number.

 

***

 

The third time Chris makes the trek to up to San Francisco he flies.

 

It’s not that he minds the long drive (he actually kind of likes it), but he can afford the last minute ticket and there’s something about boarding a plane to go see someone that just feels right this time.

 

His picture gets taken at LAX, first in the TSA line as he’s taking off his shoes and belt, and then later at the gate while he’s on the phone with Lea waiting for the boarding announcements.

 

“I’m glad you two are talking again,” Lea is saying when Chris catches a couple of young girls pointing their cell phone camera at him.  He doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t duck into that weird VIP airport lounge that always smells of leather shoes and cleaner.

 

“Yeah, well, it’s not a lot of talking, but it’s…it’s good.  I think.  It’s better.”  He doesn’t need to tell Lea that just about anything is better than years of silence and avoidance, or that he’s pretty sure Darren feels the same way.  At least he hopes so.

 

He can’t sleep on the flight – it’s too short.  But he has time to let himself mull over past and wonder might come of the future.  His coffee with Rob got him started – truly started – and now he can’t stop.  It feels like the last five years were just pretend, that he’s been lying to himself the whole time.  About everything.  Even if he didn’t realize it.  He’s pretty sure he was lying when he thought that the show would end and his life would go on without any ties to the things he was leaving behind.  That it wouldn’t matter to his future.  He could walk off set, walk away from Darren, and be just fine.

 

And Chris thought he was.  He had his new house and his old cat.  He had his steadily selling books and the adoring feedback from the people who bought them.  He had a film in the can and a studio to distribute it.  He’s got more than what he needs.  But he didn’t need Rob to point out that his writing had been slipping away from him – he’d known that for at least the last year.  And he thought the boys he never called back and the men who eventually, inevitably returned his keys just couldn’t cope with his necessarily solitary lifestyle.  It wasn’t that he didn’t like them; it was that he liked his work more.  And they couldn’t handle it ( _shouldn’t have to_ , Rob pointed out).

 

Chris knows he hasn’t been happy – truly happy – in longer than he cares to think about or admit.  Except thinking about things (and admitting certain things to himself) has sort of the point of the last couple of months and he forces himself to acknowledge that the last time his heart felt light was right around the last time Darren touched him with something akin to love.

 

Chris shivers in the airplane seat and wraps his arms around his chest.  He doesn’t know where Darren stands in any of this, and he’s still not quite sure where his own feet are.  He knows he still _feels_ for Darren, feels something, and probably always has.  Always will.  And it’s something more that the sharp throb of heat in his belly at the sight of Darren’s tanned, broad shoulders or the curve of his ass in worn jeans.  But it’s going to take him longer than this to admit that there’s been a Darren-shaped void in his life since the last days of filming, especially when he can’t know if the same goes for Darren about him.  He should probably ask.  Maybe it’s time.

 

When the plane lands, Chris thinks he might be a little closer to understanding what’s been going on all these years.

 

***

  
Chris gets a rental car at the airport and makes the much shorter drive to Darren’s house.  It feels different, arriving from a different route, but his belly tights and his heart quickens just the same when Darren’s adorable house comes into view at the top of the long driveway.

 

As he pulls up to the house, Chris realizes he _still_ doesn’t have Darren’s phone number, but it’s not like Darren has offered it up, or even asked for his in return.  Chris is relieved to see Darren’s old red truck parked outside.  It means he’s home.  (And his mulch still looks good.)

 

It’s a greyer day than it’s been before; cool enough that Chris is wearing a jacket over his standard button down.  The heart of autumn is coming and the air is damp with the threat of rain and the grass glistens with the rain that’s already fallen.  It smells of wet earth and muted flowers.   Chris kind of loves it.

 

This time when Chris knocks footsteps sound from inside the house.  Chris wipes his suddenly sweaty palms on his thighs just as the door swings open to reveal Darren.  He’s wearing soft looking sleep pants that bunch at his feet and a worn t-shirt.  His curls are messy, cheeks dark with stubble, and eyes bright behind glasses.  Chris’ belly swoops.

 

“Hey,” Darren says and his face opens up in pleased surprised.  “I wasn’t sure if you’d come today, what with the weather.”  He glances up at the sky, dark and heavy with clouds.  He steps back to let Chris inside.

 

“Oh, well, I just…assumed that…” Chris trails off.  He’s assumed a lot of things in his life.

 

“Nah, of course I want you here.  I’m getting used to our Saturday dates.  Would have missed you if you hadn’t come.”

 

Chris blushes at “date” as he takes his jacket off and hangs it on a hook near the door, next to a couple of Darren’s coats.  There are a couple pairs of shoes in a pile on a rug and he leaves his own amongst Darren’s.  He lingers a moment, looking at the homey little scene before he shakes it off and follows Darren into the living room.

  
The house smells warm and somehow familiar.  It’s rosemary and sage and something like cinnamon and dough and Chris figures Darren has candles burning somewhere.

 

“Well, I’m here.” Chris says, lamely, but it makes Darren smile.  He looks small, barefoot in his too big sweatpants.  He’s thinner than Chris remembers him being at the end of Glee, but somehow more muscular.  This life certainly agrees with him.

 

“That you are.  Sorry I don’t have any gardening projects for us today.  It’s uh, it’s reading weather, you know?”  Darren is saying, looking sheepishly at the little nook with the big rain-streaked window.  Chris can see out into the backyard, where the rain has made everything look like something out of a Jane Austen novel.

 

Chris can tell Darren’s been in that cozy looking nook for at least a few hours.  The blanket is a mess on the chair, as though Darren had just untangled himself from the folds.  There’s a mug sitting on the side table and a book on the seat where Darren clearly dropped it when he got up to answer the door.

 

“Oh, I didn’t – if you want to be alone…”

 

“Chris.  Stop.”  Darren steps in close and grasps his elbow.  Chris can feel the head of his hand through his shirt.  “I already told you – I want you here.  That doesn’t change with the weather.”  His eyes are bright, focused.  Utterly sincere.  Chris has to swallow in order to speak.

 

“Where’s Briggs?”  He asks.

 

“At home.  His owners probably kept him inside today, because of the rain.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Darren gets a look on his face – slyly knowing – that Chris knows all too well.  “You like him, don’t you?”

 

“Who?”

 

“Briggs.”  Darren’s face breaks into another grin, eyes crinkling.  “You like that big dumb dog.”

 

Chris blushes again.  “I don’t think he likes me.”

 

“He lets you in the house without growling at you.  He likes you.”

 

“Oh.”  Chris thinks that’s probably more important than Darren means for it to be.  He shuffles awkwardly, not sure where to take the moment.

 

“Well,” Darren starts and Chris is grateful for him.  “Can I get you something to drink?  I’ve got hot water for tea still on the stove.”

 

“Tea?” Chris asks, thinking of the mug on the table.  He’d assumed it was coffee.

 

“Yeah, man.  It’s so good for you.  All sorts of benefits.  And good for the throat, too.”

 

“You still take care of your throat?” Chris asks.  His stomach drops a few inches when Darren gets that odd look on his face, the one he had the last time Chris said something about his career.

 

“Come on.”  Darren turns towards the kitchen and Chris has to choice but to follow.  He notices Darren’s isn’t favoring his right knee at all today.

 

There’s a teapot on the stove and Darren turns the heat back up on it. 

 

“Earl Grey, right?”  Darren asks, already reading for a box of tea bags.  Chris leans against the counter and watches the subtle shifting of muscles in Darren’s back under his thin shirt.

 

“Yes, please.”

 

“So, what’s the plan for today?  Since I’m guessing there won’t be any gardening.”

 

Darren shrugs.  “I mean, if you want we can go into town.  There are some really great art galleries and museums.  The wharf.  Lombard.  The zoo and aquarium.  All sorts of touristy shit.  With the weather they won’t be as crowded.”  He pulls another mug down from the shelf.  It’s a Starbucks cup from New York City and Chris wonders when he got it.

 

“Is there anything that _you’d_ want to do?”

 

“Honestly?  I’m totally down for just sitting around with a book and some tea for a while.  I know that doesn’t sound like a rollicking good time but-”

 

“No, it sounds perfect.”

 

Darren glances over at him and Chris knows he’s searching his face for any hint of a lie.  There’s none to be found.  The thought of curling up under a blanket on that comfortable looking sofa with a book actually sounds like just the right thing for a cool, grey day like this one.

 

“Ok,” Darren says finally.  The teakettle whistles and Darren pours the water into the mug.  The domesticity isn’t lost on Chris.

 

“Do you have anything I can borrow?  I didn’t exactly pack any reading material.”  Chris didn’t pack anything, actually.  Just boarded the plane with his messenger bag, his wallet, and his laptop.  It had seemed like enough at the time.  And there’s something about Darren’s home – the warmth it, the low pulsing energy – that makes Chris hesitate to pull out his computer.  He’s not exactly sure why he brought it at all.

 

“Of course.  Take anything off the shelves.” Darren adds a bit of cream and a bit more raw sugar to the tea and holds out the mug. “Ta-da.  A cuppa for Colfer.”

  
Chris takes it and his stomach clenches at the sudden rush of heat from the mug through his hands.  “Thank you.”  Darren simply smiles softly in return.

 

He follows Darren out to the living room.  His heart does a funny little trip in his chest when Darren clambers back into the big chair, sitting with his legs folded under him and the blanket tucked loosely around his body.

 

“Just, you know, pick whatever you want.”  Darren waves a hand at the bookcases lining the walls.

 

Chris sets his mug of tea down on the coffee table and wanders from bookcase to bookcase, running his fingertips lightly over the spines of Darren’s books.  Some of the titles he recognizes, others he’s never heard of before.  He wants to know which of the books are Darren’s favorites; which mean the most to him.  He wants to find out which books are so loved that the spines are broken and pages are coming loose from the binding.

 

Now that’s he’s closer, Chris can see the small little trinkets and items scattered along the shelves.  He recognizes the silly souvenirs Darren picked up at every stop along the Glee tour all those years ago. A shot glass stolen from a Las Vegas casino they weren’t even supposed to be in.  A Christmas ornament from Minneapolis that was 75% off because it was almost summer.  The cheesy photo frame from a dollar gift shop in DC that still holds a picture of the Warbler boys squished together on the bus.  Chris can’t help but smile back at the image of Darren grinning the camera.  He looks so young – clean-shaven with shorter hair.  The lines are missing from the corners of his eyes and mouth.  He seems openly, effortlessly happy, and Chris remembers that he was.  They were, for a little while, at least.

 

Chris swallows.  The memories are faded, but they’re still good.  But what he doesn’t see hits him the hardest.  There’s something missing from the shelves.  Something small and easily overlooked, but Chris knows he was instinctively, unconsciously seeking it out among the reminders of the past.  But it’s not there.  He can’t imagine Darren would have thrown it away – not even after everything.

 

He’s suddenly aware that Darren might be watching him, so he blindly grabs a book from the rows and brings it over to the couch.

 

Juniper is once again napping along the back, even though there isn’t a pool of sunlight for her to curl up in.  Chris runs his fingers along her soft fur and scratches behind her ears.  He settles down against the plush cushions and mismatched pillows.  Tight jeans and a snug button down aren’t exactly the best reading attire and the fabric pulls and tugs uncomfortably at him as he shifts around.  He wants to ask Darren if he can borrow something more comfortable to wear, but he doesn’t dare.  There was a time when he could take a shirt from Darren’s floor, or underwear from the drawer.  But they’re not there yet again.  Not even close.

 

It’s started to rain harder and the arrhythmic pattering off it against the windows slows his heart and relaxes his bones.

 

Chris gets lost in the book for a few hours.  He’s missed just sitting down with no expectations, no deadlines.  He can hear Darren turning the pages of his own book and the rasp of fur on fabric when Juniper twists into a more comfortable position.  He thinks about Brian and how he still jumps into his lap when he’s trying to work.  What he doesn’t hear are cars or the static hum or electronic equipment.  There’s a different kind of quiet that permeates the corners of the home.  Time only gets broken when Darren gets up to refill his tea and comes back from the kitchen with a new steaming mug of tea for Chris too.  And that is so desperately, achingly familiar that Chris almost chokes on a harsh noise punching from the back of his throat.  If Darren hears it, he doesn’t acknowledge.

 

“Thank you,” Chris whispers.  Darren just jerks his chin slightly and retreats to his chair.  Chris wonders if Darren remembers too.

 

He can’t focus after that, can’t get back into the groove of the story.  He feels jittery, an itch crawling under his skin, and he needs to move around.  Just a little.  But he doesn’t want to disturb Darren, who looks so cozy and content in his little nook, like he could stay there all day.  And maybe he does just that sometimes, stays in with his books and his thoughts and the piano that sits in the corner.

 

“Hey Darren,” Chris keeps his voice low and Darren glances up at him, eyebrow cocked.  “Is it okay if I…?”  He lets the question trail off and gestures vaguely around the living room.

  
“Oh, yeah.  Of course.  Whatever, dude.”  Darren smiles softly, like he knows exactly what’s going on inside of Chris.

 

Chris unfolds himself from the couch, wincing slightly at the pang in his back from the awkward way he’d been sitting to read.

 

He’s only a little ashamed of how desperately he wants to see the rest of Darren’s house, to find out just what his life has looked like these last years.  It’s been months since he first showed up at that bright blue front door and he’s only seen the living room and the kitchen.  He knows there’s a hallway from the living room that leads to a bathroom, a guest bedroom, and a door he’s pretty sure opens into a little laundry room.  But there’s a gorgeous wooden staircase that leads up to the second floor, where Chris has never been.

  
Chris makes his way up those stairs, admiring the artwork lining the wall and trying to figure out of the banister is hand-carved.  He thinks it might be.  The second story isn’t the open floor plan that Chris was sort of expecting.  The staircase opens into an odd little space before leading to a hallway.  There’s another nook to the side where a couple of plants sit on a wide windowsill and cozy chair faces the window.  The view looks out over Darren’s big backyard and Chris can see the roof of the chicken coop.  He figures the hens are hiding from the rain.

 

A door is open and Chris catches a glimpse into a warmly appointed room, rich wooden furniture, and just the corner of a bed.  He swallows and doesn’t go into Darren’s bedroom.  He’s already prowling through Darren’s house – though he has Darren’s permission – but that’s too much like an invasion of Darren’s most private life.  The part Chris is no longer invited to be a part of.  Chris turns away.

 

Up here there are more pictures of Darren and his family.  Baby photos and family Christmas pictures and graduation pictures that are so adorable and so _Darren_ it hurts.  Chris touches the edge of a frame holding a photo of Darren with his parents and his brother at the opening night of his first run on Broadway.  He remembers that too.  Darren’s shocked exhilaration at getting the part, and the way he never quite got over it.  Chris heard about Darren’s second run on Broadway from Lea, but he never went to a show, even though reporters asked him about it.  A sharp throb of regret makes his fingers curl around the frame.  He should have gone, he thinks.  He should have made the time, but he knows it wasn’t just scheduling that kept him from flying back to New York City.

  
There’s a second, smaller staircase in the corner that no amount of shame over the invasion of privacy can keep Chris from going up.  It’s not like Darren forbade him from going anywhere.  The stairs leads up into an attic, which Chris should have realized it would, considering the shape of the house.

  
Chris stops when he gets to the top.  The attic has been converted into a home studio, completely with just about everything Darren could need to record an album.  There are microphones and digital mixers, interfaces and speakers, and everything is hooked up to a widescreen iMac on a desk.  Looking around, Chris sees that there acoustic and electric guitars resting on stands, a keyboard is set up by a wall, and there’s even a drum kit on the other side.  He spots a tambourine and Chris is pretty sure that’s a cowbell on the floor, but that might be a joke from one of Darren’s old band mates.

 

He takes in a deep breath.  He shouldn’t be surprised.  But he is.  He hadn’t known that Darren kept up with his music.  When he says that he lost track of what Darren was up to, what he’s denying is that he purposefully stopping listening when anyone tried to bring Darren up in conversation.  When everything ended, when the dust settled on the show and what his life had become, he was bitter and angry and didn’t want a damn thing to do with anyone.  So he shut everything out.  Lea was pretty much the only one who tried to keep in contact with him.  In the first year or so he still heard about Darren – he heard about the red carpets he walked and the events he played at.  He heard about the second tour and the second Broadway stint.  But he didn’t go to any of it.  And then the news stopped being offered and he didn’t seek it out.  He never knew when Darren left LA, and he certainly never knew if he released the album he’d always talked about.

 

Chris runs his fingers softly down the strings of one of Darren’s guitar, letting a few notes sound out.  The acoustics in the attic are somewhere incredible and suddenly Chris is desperate to know, to hear what Darren’s been creating up in this lovely, secluded little space.  It’s been years – there must be so much music waiting to be heard.  Chris can’t help but wonder who’s already been allowed that honor, if anyone.

 

He heads back down the stairs.  Darren is still curled up in his chair, but he watches as Chris comes back into the living room.

 

“Find what you were looking for?”  Darren asks, and there’s so much in that question Chris feels like he’s been punched.

 

“Yeah, maybe.  I don’t know.”  He scrubs a hand through his hair and searches for something meaningful to say, maybe about the studio, but Darren beats him to it.

 

“Do you want to stay for dinner?”  Darren asks.  Chris glances out of the window and realizes it’s starting to get dark.  He has no idea what time it is.  “That’s not your car out front so…”

 

The rental car.  Chris bites his lip.  He hadn’t bothered to purchase a return ticket, not knowing when he’d leave.

 

“Yeah, I uh – I flew here this time.”  It feels like something he should have mentioned earlier.

 

“Oh.” Darren nods like that told him something he’d been waiting to hear.

 

“But I’d love dinner, if you’re offering.”

 

“I am.” Darren sets his book down.  It’s missing the dust jacket and Chris can’t make out the title.  “I’ve got chicken thawing in the fridge.  I was just gonna make some pasta, but if you’d rather go out…?”

 

“No, pasta sounds great.”

 

Darren smiles as he rises from the chair.  “You have to help though.”

 

“Hey, I got to be a pretty decent cook there.”

 

“I know,” Darren says and his smile turns a little wistful.  “I remember.”

 

***

 

Chris can’t remember the last time he cooked with someone.  Jamie could burn cereal and the one before that preferred going out to staying in.

 

He and Darren used to cook together.  Sometimes that meant Chris whisking up a batch of cookies and slapping at Darren’s hands while he sat on the counter, sticking his fingers in the raw dough.  Chris quickly learned to make a double batch, ensuring at least a couple dozen cookies would actually get baked.  Other times it meant watching and learning while Darren made them one of his grandmother’s old recipes.  With Darren, Chris learned the names of vegetables he never knew existed and new uses for the old standbys.  It had been easy and intimate and Chris knows he took that for granted too.

 

This night, Darren gives him garlic to mince and a tomato to chop.  He’s not even using a recipe, just going by memory. 

 

“ _Conosco i miei polli_ ,” Darren says, grinning, when Chris points it out.  Of everything, Chris hasn’t forgotten the shiver that races down his spine when Darren slips into Italian.

 

The tomato came from Darren’s garden and so did the garlic, onion, and parsley.  Chris had watched through the window as Darren ducked out the back door to pluck fresh parley and pull a tomato from the vine.  He came back inside with rain in his hair and on his glasses and it had taken everything for Chris not to reach out and brush the rain from his shoulders.

 

“You didn’t used to have a fourth chicken I should know about?” Chris teases and Darren puts his hand over his heart.

 

“How dare you.  I would never eat one of my girls.”

  
Chris laughs and his heart feels light.

 

Darren sautés up the onion, garlic, and chicken while Chris gets water for pasta boiling.  He adds artichoke hearts, the tomato Chris chopped, some feta, and seasons it all with parsley, oregano, and lemon juice.  The kitchen fills with a delicious aroma that reminds Chris of the two weeks he spent in Greece a few months after Glee ended.

  
Chris dumps the pasta into the pan and watches the bones in Darren’s wrist shift as he stirs everything together.  Darren spoons pasta onto brightly decorated plates, slices up fresh bread, and carries everything out to the living room.  Chris is surprised they’re not eating in this kitchen, but doesn’t protest.

 

“Grab some wine, yeah?  There’s some red in the cabinet.  Pick whatever looks good to you.”

 

Chris pulls down a decently priced bottle, two glasses, and follows Darren.

 

“ _Buon appetito_ ,” Darren says, setting the plates down on the coffee cable.  Chris is about to ask where they’re supposed to sit when Darren lowers himself to the floor and wiggles up to the table.  Chris can’t help but grin.  Darren sat himself on the long side of the table, back against the couch, and instead of sitting across from him, Chris sits down next to him.

  
The food is delicious.  Chris can’t remember Darren ever making something that wasn’t, but it’s been years since he’s been allowed this and it’s a little like taking back something that was lost.

 

“ _Complimenti alla cuoco_ ,” Chris mumbles, because it’s true, and because it’s one of the things he still remembers.  Darren had spent long hours trying to teach him a few simple phrases, but mostly Chris remembers tasting the words from Darren’s lips.  Darren blushes at the compliment and Chris wonders if he’s remembering those hours too.

 

“So,” Chris begins after a few companionable minutes.  “Can we talk about something?”

 

“Of course.  We can talk about anything.”  There’s something in the way Darren says it that makes Chris sure it’s true.

 

Chris takes another bite of pasta and a long drink of the wine to give himself a moment to try and put together his thoughts.  “I saw your studio.  Upstairs.”

 

“I figured.”

 

“Is that – I feel like I should…” Chris drums his fingers on the table.  Darren is looking down at his plate.  “You still make music.”

 

“I do.”  Darren nods a little and pushes pasta around.

 

“I didn’t know that.”

 

“I know you didn’t.”  It doesn’t sounds like an accusation, even though it should be.

 

“I’m…are you putting out albums or is it – I haven’t been…I don’t-” Chris waves his hand like he can pluck the words he need from the air.  It doesn’t work.

 

“Yeah, I’ve been working on my own stuff.  There was an EP and an album.  I did them myself, here, so it’s not like, you know, they were hits or anything.”  Darren shrugs like it doesn’t matter, and to him it probably doesn’t.  “Took them on the road for a bit too.  That was fun.  And I’ve been producing for some friends.  It’s…nice.  It’s a different kind of pressure.  But I like it.  And I guess I’m sort of working on a new one.  I don’t know yet.”

 

Chris bites so hard on his lip he thinks he tastes blood.  He’s missed so much and it’s all his fault.  He’s the one who cut himself off from everything.  He’s the one who put this distance between them.  And Chris knows he needs to be the one to reach a hand out to attempt and begin to fix things.  He doesn’t know what’s left to mend, but he needs to try.

 

“I’m sorry,” Chris whispers and it feels like it comes from his bones.  “I’m sorry I didn’t know.  I should have known.”

 

“It’s ok.”  It might be okay with Darren, but it’s not okay with Chris.  Not this time.

 

“It’s not.  I-”

 

_I left.  I left you.  I left everything.  And then you left too._

  
Chris wants to touch Darren, in some way, to make that connection again, so he does.  He reaches over and rests his palm against the back of Darren’s hand.  His skin is warm and just a little rough at the knuckles and it fits into the curve of his palm just like it always did.

 

“So, tell me about your music.”

  
Darren’s thumb strokes once against his own.

 

***

 

The world is dark through the window and two empty bottles of wine sit on the coffee table.  Darren brought out a bottle of whiskey for himself after Chris finished off the first of the wine.  Chris can’t recall the last time he drank that much without the sole purpose getting blind, stupid drunk.  He feels flushed and loose, relaxed and open in a way he hasn’t in years.  His fingers tingle with warmth and so do his toes and all he wants are the things he once had.

 

They’ve been talking for hours.  Not about everything, not about the deeper things that are buried so far under the surface Chris worries he’ll never be able to pull them up.  But they talk.  Darren tells him about his newer music; about the little tour he went on two years after the show ended.  He tells him about he bands he’s been producing for – friends and friends of friends.  Guys who are talented but can’t afford to book “professionals” yet, and don’t want to get caught up in record labels if they can help it.  His hands flutter wildly when he talks and Chris can tell Darren’s found something he truly loves, something that keeps him going every day.

  
Darren tells him about the run on Broadway and how much it meant to him that they invited him back.  He mentions that he’s still involved with those guys and their men’s grooming product and that makes Chris grin a little.  And he tells him about buying the house with the yard he transformed into a little farm.  He hedges a little – despite the flush of whine across his cheeks – when Chris presses about _why_ he moved out of LA.

 

“I – I just had to.  I needed to,” is all he’ll say.  But Chris is pretty damn that it was because of him.  Or at least partly because of him.  The shame settles deep in his gut and he knows they’re going to have to talk about that too.

 

And Chris opens up to Darren about his books and his scripts, the successes and failures.  He wants to hide how much he’s been struggling with this next book, how the words won’t come and the ones that do are all wrong.  Meaningless.  But he can’t hide that.  Not when Darren is so close and his face is so open and trusting.  They’re moving forward and he can’t step back now.  So he lets it out.  How he’s afraid he’s tapped out, that there’s nothing left for him to write, even though he still has two books left in his current deal and he still _wants_ to.  And he confesses how knows the last script he sent out wasn’t worth anyone’s time and won’t get anywhere, but he’d had to, if only to appease his agents.

 

It feels good, to finally let the words out.  He thinks they’ve been sitting in his chest and throat for years, clogging him up and growing fetid.  When he looks over, Darren is leaning back against the couch and his forearms are dangling loosely on his drawn-up knees.  Chris lets slip about Jamie before he can stop that too, and a few others.  Darren hums deep in throat, but doesn’t say anything about it, just lets Chris try and explain how they never worked out, and how, when he thinks about it, it was probably mostly because of him.  What’s there for him to say about it?

 

“Me?” Darren looks startled when Chris cautiously turns the question of other lovers back on Darren.  “I mean, yeah, I’ve dated but like…” Darren shrugs.  Chris wants to know, know who he’s been with and how long the relationships lasted, if Darren even counts them as relationships at all.  The way Darren opens his hands out guilelessly makes Chris think that Darren didn’t count those lovers as much at all.  Chris should be ashamed how that makes warmth bloom through his chest, but he’s not.

 

Chris glances over.  Darren is right there, sprawled next to him, so close with his eyes bright in the dim light and his reddened mouth and the way he’s been shifting ever closer to Chris since they first sat down.

 

He’s beautiful – he’s always been beautiful – and Chris is leaning in before he truly knows what he’s doing.  Chris can taste the whiskey on Darren’s breath as he exhales and his own lips part slightly as he presses in, finding Darren’s mouth.

  
It’s everything and nothing like he remembers.  The shape is the same, the softness of Darren’s lips against his own and the rough scratch of his stubble.  But it’s wrong.  It’s off.  Darren isn’t responding the way he used to.  He’s pushing him back instead of pulling him in and even as drunk as he is, Chris knows that’s wrong.  So very wrong.

 

“Darren,” he whispers, whimpers.  His hands come up, clutching at Darren’s biceps, his shoulders, trying to pull him in where he belongs, where he used to fit so perfectly.  “Darren.”

 

Chris pushes in, nosing at Darren’s cheek, trying to turn his mouth back to his.  He’s breathing so heavily, heart pounding so hard he knows Darren can hear it.  He wants to press in so Darren can feel it too, rapid against his own chest.  He’s right there.

 

“Chris.  I’m-” Darren swallows and it’s a wet sound in the silence.  His breath his hot against Chris’ ear and his shudders, hand grasping reflexively, pulling at Darren’s clothes, scratching at his neck.  Darren shivers like he can’t help it.

 

“Come on,” Chris pants.  He angles in, searching for Darren’s mouth again.

 

“This isn’t…I’m not-”

 

“You are, you are.”  Chris shift, tries to push himself into Darren’s lap.  He gasps too loudly when Darren’s hands finally close on his hips, holding him tight.  He’s missed those hands so much that he arches into the touch.

 

“Chris,” Darren voice is deep, rough.  He takes a deep breath and Chris thinks this is it.

 

 _This is it_. 

 

“Stop.”  The word is so loud and everything shudders to a halt.  “Stop,” Darren repeats and the hands on Chris’ hips are pushing him back.  Pushing him away.

 

“Oh god,” Chris whispers.  His stomach is rolling and he’s burning hot.  His blood is pounding in his ears and he feels embarrassed and shamed.  Utterly rejected.  Like a door he was pushing open just slammed just in his face.  “Oh fuck.”  He hasn’t meant to – but he did.  He did.  As if he hasn’t fucked up enough.

 

“Shh,” Darren pets a too hot hand down his back and Chris swears his feels the brush of lips across his temple as Darren pulls away from him to stand.  It feels like a benediction he doesn’t deserve.  Darren reaches down, takes his hands, tugging him up.  He sways wildly on his feet, the mixture of wine, arousal, and humiliation too much for him.

 

Darren guides him through the hallway and for a brief, wild moment Chris thinks that maybe, just maybe Darren has changed his mind and is going to take him to bed, until Darren opens one of the doors and leads him into the guest bedroom.  Of course.  The rush disappointment leaves him dizzy again, but maybe that’s just the wine.  Chris knows it’s not.  At least Darren didn’t try and take him up the stairs to the other guest room.

 

“I’m sorry,” he mutters when Darren eases him down to the bed.  “I didn’t-” His head is starting to throb and his tongue feels too thick, too clumsy for words.

 

“Shh,” Darren repeats.  He’s not smiling, but he doesn’t seem angry.  Not really.  Maybe a little sad.  “Come on.”

 

With Darren’s gentle help, Chris strips down to his underwear without falling over and crawls under the covers.  He hates that he barely felt the heat of Darren’s hands on him through the haze of alcohol and bitter humiliation.  Darren pulls the covers up around him and Chris swears he feels like the brush of lips across his forehead.  The sheets are soft and when Chris licks his lips, he tastes the faint burn of whiskey.


	5. Until The End Starts

When Chris wakes his entire body hurts.  It’s a little reminiscent of the long-gone days of 12-hour rehearsals, except for the bonus of the pounding headache and the disgusting fuzz coating his tongue.  His head feels three sizes too big for his neck and when he tries to open his eyes, a wave of nausea makes him feel like he’s falling even though he’s still lying down.  Chris breathes in slowly through his nose; he is _not_ going to puke anywhere in Darren’s beautiful house, including the guest room.  Especially not after the stunt he pulled last night.

 

Chris gets out of bed as carefully as he can, taking a moment perched on the edge of the mattress to hang his head between his knees.  He struggles to keep last night’s dinner from making a mess of the hardwood floors, breathing until his bladder warns him he doesn’t have any longer before he’ll have an entirely different problem on his hands.

 

He stumbles to the bathroom and pees until he feels hollowed out and then he pees a little more.  He washes his hands and splashes water on his face.  When he looks up into the mirror, the man gazing back at him is pale with bloodshot eyes and regret etched across his features.  He thinks he can see how bad his breath is.  Luckily, there’s a new toothbrush waiting for him on the counter and Chris brushes until he’s sure he won’t kill a small animal just by breathing on it.  He hopes the rest of him doesn’t smell as bad because he doesn’t have the energy to get into the shower, despite the fluffy towels hanging nearby.  He also grabs a few Tylenol from a bottle set out on the counter, and he knows he has Darren to thank for that too.

  
When he comes back into the bedroom, he sees that Darren has left a small pile of clothes on the chair: jeans and a long-sleeved green Henley that’s soft with wear and even a fresh pair of briefs.  Chris smiles even though it makes his head throb.  He knows how much he sweats when he drinks and he’s sure his clothes must be foul.  He changes into the clean clothes.  They’re tight on him – the shirt barely fits – but they smell of Darren’s laundry soup and just a hint of Darren himself.  Chris lifts the shirt to his nose and breathes it in, eyes closing against the flood of memories.

 

He needs to apologize and he hopes Darren will understand.

 

Darren is already in the kitchen when he shuffles in.  He’s standing at the stove, dressed in loose sweats and a shirt Chris knows is a faded UMich tee even without seeing the cracked logo on the front.

 

“Hi,” Chris offers, softly.  Darren glances over his shoulder.  Chris shifts awkwardly on his feet and lets Darren take him in.  His eyes aren’t accusing or angry and for that Chris is grateful.  But last night hasn’t been erased and shouldn’t be.

 

“There’s coffee in the pot,” Darren says.  He’s making something on the stove, something that smells so delicious it overrides the nausea still rolling through Chris.

 

“Thank you.”  Yesterday, Darren made him a cup of tea.

 

Chris steps closer, taking two mugs down from the shelves.  One is an old, chipped Lion King mug and the other he’s pretty sure Darren stole from set.  “You want?”  He asks, tipping his head towards the coffee pot.

 

“Please.”

 

Chris adds sugar and cream to Darren’s cup and the same to his own.  He pushes the one towards Darren. 

 

“Thanks,” Darren lifts the mug to his lips and takes a long drink.  He hasn’t shaved and his hair is a riotous mess.  Chris wants to push his fingers through it and tell him he’s sorry until the words sink from his mouth into Darren’s skin.

 

Chris glances down at what Darren’s cooking.  It looks like a giant skillet of egg scramble.  He’s pretty sure there’s some sort of sausage in it, along with bell peppers, onions, and cheese.  He’s so fucking grateful for Darren he can’t breathe.

 

“I hope you still have that hangover hunger you were always known for.  Don’t want the eggs to go to waste.  I dare say the girls made them especially for you.”  Darren throws him a sweet, little grin over his shoulder and Chris thinks that maybe - just maybe - everything will be okay after all.

 

Chris offers him a smile in return and his stomach rumbles at the sight of the food.  He knows Darren’s right, at least about that.  He always does stuff his face after a night of liquor.

 

“Yeah, that sounds great.”

 

“Have a seat.  It’s just about done.”

  
Chris grabs a couple of plates and forks and slides onto one of the stools at the big, woodblock kitchen island.  He watches Darren stir the scramble a few more times, the movements practiced and easy, before he turns off the burner and brings the skillet over to Chris, dishing the eggs out onto the plates.  It’s so close to the way dinner started the night before, and yet there’s a subtle energy in the air this morning and Chris knows exactly why.

 

Darren sits down next to him, bringing over a plate of toast, and Chris lets out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.  Another time, in a different life, he would have turned so their knees knocked together and even propped his feet on the rung of Chris’ stool.  It means enough to Chris that Darren didn’t stand on the other side of the island to eat his breakfast.

 

The eggs are cooked perfectly, of course they are.  Chris is pretty sure they’re actually the best eggs he’s ever eaten (and he’s had Darren’s mom’s home cooking), and it’s only partly to do with the fact they’re literally fresh from the hen.

 

“Do you have any-” Chris starts to ask, but Darren is already pushing a little bowl of sour cream towards him.

  
He wants to just sit and soak in the moment, the scent of coffee in the air and the warmth of Darren next to him.  But he has things he needs to say.

 

“I’m sorry,” he finally whispers.  He can feel Darren stiffen up next to him, but only briefly.

 

“For what?”

 

“For last night.  That was…well, it was completely inappropriate and I’m sorry.”  Chris looks over at Darren, and finds him looking right back at him.  “I don’t need to say I was drunk but that’s no excuse.”

 

“No,” Darren agrees and Chris is appreciative of that too.

 

“I shouldn’t have, but I did.  And I’m sorry.  I’m really, really sorry.  I-” Chris stops, swallows.  He’s not sure if he wants to say what he’s thinking.  He’s not sure how far he can go.

 

“You…?”  Darren prompts.

 

“I didn’t want our first kiss after…after so long to be like that.  It wasn’t fair.  To you.”

 

“Oh.”  There’s so much in that one word.  Chris feels just as exposed as he had the night before.

 

“Yeah, so.  I’m sorry.  And I hope you’re not mad at me.”

 

“I’m not mad.”  Darren’s ears are a little pink, but Chris isn’t quite sure what that means, so he lets it go.

 

“Ok.  Good.”

 

“Good.”  Darren nods and then leans in, bumping their shoulders together lightly.

 

They finish up breakfast in much more comfortable, companionable silence.  The kind of silence Chris had grown so used to with Darren all those years ago, the kind he hasn’t had since.  He helps Darren clear the dishes, wishing he didn’t have a dishwasher so they could spend a few minutes shoulder to shoulder, up to their elbow in suds.

 

“So I was thinking,” Chris says, bringing the coffee mugs over to the sink.  “Before I got too drunk to think about anything at all.”

 

Darren snickers as he loads the dishwasher.

 

“I was thinking that you should try and do a real album, you know?  You’ve got all this music and it’s so good, well, I’m assuming it is.  I haven’t actually heard any of it yet, which you should let me do, by the way.  So, you should, you know, do something with it.  Put it out there.”

 

Darren goes still and Chris thinks the temperature in the kitchen drops fifteen degrees.

 

“Fuck.  You just don’t get it, do you?”  Darren’s voice is suddenly tinged with harshness.  Chris shivers and doesn’t know what he’s said, what he did wrong.  Darren’s face is hard and closed off, a little like it was when everything was falling apart the first time.

 

“What?”

 

“It’s not about that.  It’s _never_ been about that?  Jesus Christ, Chris.  How can you still not see that?  How do you _still_ not understand?”  Darren’s eyes have gone dark and dangerous.  And miserable.

  
“Darren?” Chris is so confused.  He hadn’t for one moment thought Darren would react like this.

 

“You fucked things up.”  It’s almost a whisper, but Chris hears it anyway.

 

“I-”

 

“I was happy here,” Darren interrupts, gesturing wildly to the house around them.  “I was doing fine.  Without you.  Without anything.  I’d moved on from everything, the mess everything became.  It took for-fucking-ever, but I managed it.  I made a new life.  Do you have any idea how hard that was?   And then you just showed up out of the fucking blue and it’s like – do you even know what you do to me?” Darren rakes his hands through his hair.  His eyes are desperate.  “Did you ever know?  Did you ever fucking understand?”

 

Chris swallows and thinks, “No, I didn’t.”  His hands are staring to shake.

 

“I don’t give a shit about any of that.  Not like y-” Darren cuts himself off, but Chris knows what he was going to say.

 

“What?  Not like _me_?”  Anger rises up in his gut.  “That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?  That I’m the one who cared too much about ‘fame’ and ‘fortune.’” Chris spits the words out.  He knows his voice is rising, but he can’t help it.

 

“We were always different. We always wanted different things.”  Darren’s gripping the counter so tightly his knuckles are white.

 

“Oh fuck that,” Chris snarls. “You were in the business too.  You wanted on that goddamn show.  You went to all those events.  You went on tour.  You wanted everything, too.  Don’t make me out to be the only asshole here because I wanted some of the same things.  Don’t act like you’re above the money.  You’re not.”

 

“At least I didn’t let it take over my goddamn life,” Darren spits back.  “And I wasn’t the run who ran from fucking everything when it got a little hard, a little fucking messy.”

 

“You didn’t run?  You ran the furthest.  Look at you, just hiding out in this fucking house out in the fucking countryside!”

 

“And what the fuck are you doing?  Look at you in your giant house, with your gate, surrounded by your goddamn books.  Look how well _that’s_ going for you.”  Darren’s voice is ugly.

 

“Don’t you fucking dare.”  Chris chest is so tight it hurts, heart pounding harshly behind his ribs.  Tears prickle in his eyes and he blinks rapidly.  No fucking way is he going to cry.

 

“I was the one who stood to lose _everything_.”  Darren’s eyes have gone wild.  “And you – you picked the job.”

 

 _Over me_ , goes unspoken and hangs heavy in the air.

 

“You were supposed to be the one who understood that,” Chris wraps his arms around his chest.  “How important the work was to me, what that meant to me.  What I needed from it.  And you didn’t.  And don’t you dare pretend like you didn’t pick the job too.”

 

“I didn’t pick anything.  You never let me make a fucking choice.”

 

“No.” Chris shakes his head.  “Don’t you _dare_ put this all on me.  I wasn’t the only one making it hard.  I wasn’t the one making all the decisions.”

 

“No, you’re right.  It wasn’t just you.  But you certainly didn’t make things easier.  You let them decide for us.  You didn’t even fight for us.”  The accusation cuts deep, but not as deep as the break in Darren’s voice.

 

“And what good would it have done?”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Darren throws his hands up before tucking them around his chest.  He makes himself small.  “You should have _tried_.  I needed you to try.  And you didn’t.”

 

Chris can’t help but think of all the things that were taken out of their hands, all the nights that weren’t theirs.

 

“You never said anything about it.”

 

“I shouldn’t fucking have to!”

  
Chris stops short, breath caught tight and pained in his chest.  Darren’s never yelled at him before, not truly, not once in all the years they’ve known each other.  Not even at the end, when it felt like the world was crumbling to pieces and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

 

“You left,” Chris whispers.  It feels like it’s the only thing he can hold onto right now, the only card he has.  “You left the fucking city.”

 

“Not until you were already gone.”

 

Chris takes as deep of a breath as he can.  Everything hurts.  He wants to crawl back into bed and hide, but his head is hundreds of miles away.  There’s silence in the house, different from the quiet from before, punctuated by their heavy breaths.  They’ve both lost control and Chris doesn’t know how to get it back.  It feels like whatever tenuous thing they’ve rebuilt between them has been shattered and the jagged pieces lay strewn about his feet.

 

“You never called me,” he says.  It’s all he has left.

 

“I did.”

 

“What?”  Chris looks up.

 

“I did call you.”  Darren slumps against the counter.  His eyes are red-rimmed.  He looks broken and Chris hates that he did that.  Again.  “But you’d changed your number.  I figured that was you, I don’t know, drawing a line.  And I knew what side I stood on.”

  
Chris remembers the day he changed his number.  At the time he hadn’t considered how it would make anyone else feel; he’s just loved the freedom he thought it gave him.  He knows now that it wasn’t freedom at all.

 

“I – I should go.”  But he doesn’t want to.  He wants to stay and he wishes he’d never come.  But he can’t stay here, not like this.  Not when they’re both on the ragged edge.

 

Darren doesn’t say anything, just jerks his head in a tiny nod.

 

Chris leaves the kitchen.  He grabs his coat from the hook by the door and shoves his feet into his shoes.  He can book a flight home when he gets to the airport; he doesn’t care how long he has to wait.

  
He tries not to look back at the charming little house on the hill as he drives away, but he can’t help it.  He thinks Darren might be watching him from the window, but there’s no way to be sure.

 

***

 

Chris has hours to kill at the San Francisco airport before the earliest available flight and he sits at the gate staring blankly at a magazine, trying to pretend like he didn’t leave his heart behind in pieces on Darren’s kitchen floor.

 

His photograph gets taken at LAX when he lands and it’s not until he gets home that he remembers he’s still wearing Darren’s borrowed clothes.  He finds that he doesn’t even remotely care.  They can publish whatever they want with whatever insinuation they please – they’re never going to know the truth.  Chris isn’t sure he’s even going to truly know.  He hopes he does though, one day.

 

Chris finds himself standing in the middle of his living room, looking around helplessly at his furniture and his carpets and none of it feels like _his_.  He was close to tears on the flight, now he just feels empty.  He’s never been so comfortable in this house than he was in Darren’s home.  He doesn’t need to wonder why that is.  He knows.  He’s always known.

  
He remembers the first apartment of Darren’s he ever went to, the old shitty one he was living in with some of the guys back when he first landed the role on the show.  He remembers how cramped it was and how the bathroom smelled a little like mold.  One of the kitchen cabinets was missing a door and there was a spot in the living room that creaked ominously.  He kind of loved it.  And then later, Darren’s first house.  The way it almost fit him, but not quite.  The design was a little wrong – too open, too bare – and Chris knows now there wasn’t enough backyard for him to be truly happy.  Chris had been a fan of the big master bedroom with the built in bookcases though.

 

The pages of his book are still spread out across his living room floor, only slightly disturbed from where he’d left them by Brian walking all over them.  The old cat is currently perched on the armrest of the sofa, staring at him like he knows exactly where Chris has been.

 

“I really, really fucked up this time, buddy,” Chris tells him, scratching him behind the ears.  Brian just blinks slowly up at him.

  
Chris stares at the pages, the mess of words he knows doesn’t make any sense at all.  He can hardly recall what story he was trying to tell in the first place.  And that tells him exactly what he needs to know.

 

Before he can talk himself out of it, Chris gathers up all the pages from the floor and takes them into his office.  He would simply throw them into the recycling bin, but he doesn’t want to worry about anyone else getting a hold of them.  And besides, the recycling won’t get picked up for days.  He wants this over and done with, completely irreversible.  He has a paper shedder next to his desk, for anything with confidential information on it, and Chris watches with a certain about of glee as page after page of his book gets torn into oblivion.

 

But it’s not enough.  He opens up his laptop.  The document is still open, waiting for him.  Chris’ fingers tremble.  Once he does this, it’s over.  He doesn’t have another backup.  He hasn’t given any of the pages to his publisher and he never bothered to save it to his external hard drive the way he does with everything else.

 

“Just fucking do it,” Chris whispers to himself.  Brian twines around his feet, meowing softly, and Chris deletes the document.  And then he empties the trash.  The book is gone.  He’s sure some tech could restore the files, but that’s not going to happen.

 

Chris sits back in his desk chair and breathes in deep.  His hands are still shaking a little and his heart is pounding triple-time, but it feels like just about the best thing he does in a long while.  He doesn’t know what he’s going to tell his agents or his publisher, but right now he doesn’t care.  And he thinks that maybe a new idea, a new story is starting to take root deep in his brain.  A better story.

 

Instead, Chris tugs off his clothes ( _Darren’s clothes_ , he remembers with a dull pain in his chest) and pulls on his running shorts and a t-shirt.  Exercise was always as escape, giving him time and space to think.  And since he doesn’t have any plants he can’t mulch (or even any mulch), running is going to have to do the job.  He’s got more than enough to think about after all.

 

***

 

A couple of hours, more miles than he bothered to count, and a shower later, Chris grabs his phone from where he’d left it on the counter.  His legs are tired and sore, but it’s a good kind of hurt.  It feels like something he’s earned.  Chris thinks about calling his mom (it’s been far, far too long since they had a decent talk and he owes her one) but he knows he needs someone else right now.

 

The phone rings a few times before picking up, giving Chris just enough time to cycle through a couple of questions and discarding them all.

 

“Did you know he’s been working on an album?”  He blurts out as soon as the call connects.

 

Lea’s silence tells him everything he needs to know.  Chris slumps down onto the couch.  He really should stretch before his calves tighten up and his back starts to protest.

 

“Have you heard any of the songs?”  He wishes he’d asked Darren for the music before he fucked everything up.

 

“Yeah, but Chris-” He can so easily picture the look of concern that’s probably on Lea’s face right now.  The one where she wants to help out, but she’s also a little disappointed in him.  He can’t blame her for the second one.

 

“I need to hear them.”  He’s pretty sure it would put some things into perspective.  “Lea, please.  I…I really screwed up, ok?”

 

“What happened?”

 

Chris opens and closes his mouth soundlessly a few times, struggling to gather his scattered thoughts into something more coherent before he gives up and just starts talking.  He tells her everything.  He tells her about he’s been hanging out with Darren, about helping out with Darren’s garden.  He talks about the dinner and the wine and the way he kissed Darren.  Lea makes a squeaking little noise at that, only tempered when Chris explains how Darren pushed him away and then tucked him into bed because he was too drunk to do it himself.  He tells her about the breakfast, and how things were starting to seem okay again because he fucked it up royally with his thoughtless comments.  He whispers about how he should have known better from the beginning.

 

“It’s not that easy, Chris,” Lea says, when Chris tells her how he told Darren to just make another album, like it was nothing big.  Nothing special.  He’s such a fool.  “There’s baggage there.”

 

“I get that now.  I do.  I was an idiot.  I think I’m…starting to get that I’ve been an idiot about a lot of things, but mostly especially about him.  And he’s the one that I-” Chris stops.  He doesn’t really know what Darren is to him anymore.   He’s not sure he every really knew what they were to each other.  There was attraction, of course.  That was the thing he could never control, never stood a chance at reigning in.  But there was more, too.  There’d always been more.  He’d been in love with Darren once, in his own way.  And he thinks he could get there again, if he only had the chance.  But he doesn’t know what – if anything – Darren would want with him anymore.

 

“I need to apologize to him.”  Chris pauses and his heart constricts painfully.  “Again.”

 

“Yeah, you do.”

 

“But I don’t think I should just show up at his house again.  Not after that.”  He thinks that maybe this time Darren wouldn’t be home, or worse, that he’d be home and not open the door for Chris.

 

“Lea,” Chris lets a few notes of begging slip into his voice.  He’s not above that.  Not anymore.  “Please.”  The stubborn pride he’d been clinging to before that kept him for asking for Darren’s number this whole time is gone.

 

“I need to talk to him.  I know you have his number.  You’re the only one I can ask.”  Chris can’t imagine how hard it’s going to be to attempt to reconnect with everyone else.  He knows he should, but that will come in it’s own time.  This is more important.  He wishes he’d realized that years ago.

 

“Are you going to hurt him again?” Lea asks, her voice hard, and Chris imagines her standing with her hands on his hips, growing belly curving out.  She’s always been a force to be reckoned with, fiercely protective, especially with the people she loves.

 

“You can’t make me promise that.  You know that’s not fair.  And it’s not how this shit works.  But you know me.”  Chris swallows down the lump in his throat when he says that.  He’s not sure _he_ even knows who he is.  Not anymore.

  
“Chris, you know I love you.  And you know I love him.  And I also know how stupid you two are around each other.  Can you at least try and not fuck this up even more?  I’m growing a kid here.  Don’t make me babysit the both of you as well.”

 

“I won’t.”

 

Lea sighs, like the weight of the world is on her shoulders, and hers alone.  Chris knows how that feels.  But she gives him Darren’s number nonetheless.

 

“Don’t be an asshole again,” she says.  “I’ll know it if you are.”

 

Chris can’t help but laugh.

 

“Love you too.  Give your belly a pat for me.”

 

“Get your ass back to New York and do it yourself.”

 

Lea hangs up on him, leaving Chris to start at the number scratched out on a scrap of paper.  Chris enters the digits into his contacts.  He used to have a photo of Darren that popped up whenever he called or texted.  It was a picture taken backstage at A Very Potter Senior Year of Darren chewing on his Gryffindor tie.  And before that it was one of Darren in the make up chair on set, back during his first days.  Chris had snapped the picture when Darren wasn’t paying attention and he always loved how soft and sweet Darren looked, with just a hint of the Warbler blazer showing.  Chris leaves it blank for now, hoping – perhaps against all hope – that he’ll get a new photo soon enough.

 

Chris doesn’t call Darren right away even though he’s fingers itch to dial the unfamiliar number.  He’s got a few things to take care of first, and it’s only been half a day since their fight.  Chris’s stomach turns uncomfortably when he remembers it, remembers what they said to each other and the pain and fury in Darren’s eyes.  But he knows, however much it hurt, that it needed to happen.

 

Instead, Chris sends an email to his publisher and his agents explaining that he doesn’t have anything for the new book, but that an idea is brewing.  He doesn’t bother to tell them about the pages he’d destroyed.  There’s no point.  It feels good, feels cleansing, to know that the next document he’s going to pull up will be a white, blank page with no expectations.  Then he gets a call from his publicist, warning him that paparazzi photos of him were getting published.  He can’t bring himself to care.

 

Chris opens up a celebrity gossip website and sure enough there are photos of him at the airport, clearly wearing Darren’s clothes.  It wouldn’t matter so much if they weren’t things Darren had publicly worn a hundred times over.  At least his expression is schooled into bored blankness, belying the anguish roiling just below the surface.  When he looks, there are already 50 comments on the photos, even though they were just posted.  He bets he knows exactly what they’re all about.  Sure enough, when he clicks on them, it’s a stream of excited chatter about how clothes are clearly Darren’s and what that means and why Chris would be wearing them after all this time and how he must have flown in from San Francisco and hundred other variables.  For the first time, Chris smiles when he reads the comments.  Whatever concern he used to carry over that kind of gossip is gone in the stark reality of all the things he’d lost while caring about the wrong things.

 

The sun has gone down and Chris can’t wait anymore.  His hearts pounds as he grabs his phone.  His palms are sweating and his knees are like Jell-O and somehow this is the hardest thing he’s ever done in his life.  But it’s also the thing he needs to do the most.

 

But the call goes straight to voicemail.  Chris would be relieved if he weren’t so desperate to talk.

 

“Hey, it’s me.  Uh, Chris.  I got your number from Lea.  I hope that’s ok.  I just…I just wanted to talk to you.  To apologize.  Again.  I know I fucked up and I’m sorry.  About everything.  I want to talk to you, to make this right, if that’s what you want.  So if you could give me a call back I would, well, I’d appreciate it.  Bye.”  Chris hangs up.  He’s done his part.  Now he just has to wait for Darren.

 

That night, Chris is getting ready for bed when the doorbell sounds throughout the house.  Chris frowns.  There aren’t that many people who know where he lives, and even fewer who have the access code to his gate.  And fewer still who would show up this late.  Brian perks up from his spot on the pillow and trots downstairs, meowing loudly at the door.

 

Chris follows him.  When he looks through the peephole, his heart plummets to the floor and then leaps into his throat.

 

Darren is standing on his front porch.


	6. And I'll Kneel Down

Chris fumbles with the locks, fingers gone numb and useless, and it seems to take too many breathless moments before he can yank the door open.  The warm breeze rushes inside his house.

 

“You were right,” Darren says before Chris can even open his mouth.  “I was hiding.” He’s wearing a beanie and a soft hoodie, shoulders drawn in and arms folded across his body, making him look small.

 

“You-”

 

“But you’d already gone.  There wasn’t anything left for me here.”

 

 _Oh_. 

 

And Chris gets it.  He does.  It sinks all the way down into his marrow.  They did this to themselves.  Every day they let other things, other people, get in the way of what they were trying creating with each other.  Every time they didn’t say the things they should have.  Little by little they let it chip ceaselessly away at what they’d vainly tried to build, at what they could have been, until there was nothing left but dust and bits of mortar.  He knows how terrible the circumstances had been back then, how things really couldn’t have been, but neither of them had worked hard enough to make things different.  Or better.  They can now.

 

“I’m sorry,” Chris whispers.  A tiny twitch quirks Darren’s cheek, the faintest semblance of a smile.

 

“I know.  I am too.”

  
Chris stares at Darren’s face, the familiar planes and the still unfamiliar lines.  He waits until Darren’s meets his gaze with wide, hesitant eyes.

 

“Come inside?”  Chris steps back from the doorway, giving Daren room.  He sees Darren glance inside his house before he ducks his head and steps over the threshold.  He has a messenger bag with him and he sets it down on the floor.

 

Brian immediately twines through Darren’s legs, meowing for attention, until Darren crouches down to scritch behind his ears.

 

“I think he missed you,” Chris says before he can stop it.  He’s spent far too much time not saying the things that desperately needed to be said, holding back from the truth just because it was a hard thing to confront.

 

Darren smiles a little.  “Well, that’s because I always brought him the best treats.”

 

Chris watches as Brian rolls over onto his back for belly rubs.  “I don’t think that was the only reason.”

 

Darren looks up at him through those devastatingly long eyelashes of his.  His eyes are whiskey dark and there’s so much in them Chris doesn’t even know where to begin.  He wants to relearn every shade that Darren eyes can turn.

 

“No, I suppose not.”  Chris’ heart pounds in his throat.  He knows what they’re both struggling to say.  His hands flutter uselessly at his sides.

 

“If it’s any conciliation, I think Briggs misses you already.”  Darren lips are reddened and chapped where he’s clearly been chewing on them.

 

“I-” Chris starts speak, but Darren stands up, holding a hand out.

 

“Look.  Before you – let me just say something.” Darren wraps his arms back around his chest, like he’s holding himself together.  “I didn’t come all the way here to play with your cat.”

 

“I figured.”  Chris’ throat is dry and he swallows.  “How did you know…?”

 

“Lea.”  Darren says it like it’s obvious, which it should have been.

 

“Of course.”  Chris rubs at his neck.  He is going to throw that woman the biggest, best baby shower gift he can manage.

 

“It’s just – after this morning, after you left,” Darren swallows thickly, looking away.  His brow is creased and the dim lighting glints off the grey in his hair.  “I realized that I couldn’t do it again.”

 

Chris is pretty sure this is what it feels like to have your heart broken.

 

“Oh.”

 

“I couldn’t let you walk away again.” Darren’s eyes lift; meet his, and Chris sucks in a sharp breath.  His heart starts beating again.  “And I couldn’t let myself just watch it happen.  Not again.”

 

“Darren,” Chris whispers.  He wants to close the space between them, wants to unfold Darren’s arms and wrap them around his own body.  He’s pretty sure they’ll still fit together.

 

“I know that I fucked up too, when I stopped trying and just…let you go.  But I always wanted you there.  I always had space for you.  But you – you didn’t have space for me.”  Darren looks like he hates to even say the words.

 

Chris suddenly remembers a night when he went through Darren’s sock drawer and resorted every pair.  Darren spent three weeks wearing mismatched socks in public.  When a reporter asked him about, Darren simply shrugged and laughed and said that sometimes you needed to switch things up, including your socks.  Chris hadn’t thought anything more of it then, but he realizes now what it meant that Darren had always trusted him with that, with his possessions, with his space.  And he hadn’t returned it.

 

“I don’t-” Chris rubs at his neck.  There’s so much riding on this moment.  It feels huge, but he couldn’t stop it if he tried.  “I don’t think I could have.  Then.  I don’t think I was ready.  For you.”  And it’s the biggest confession he’s ever had to make.  As soon as the words leave his lips it’s the weight that everyone talks about easing up from his chest.  He breathes.

 

“I know.  I think I always knew.”  Darren doesn’t sound angry, just calm.  Centered.  Chris thinks a weight is gone from his soul too.  “But it doesn’t mean that I didn’t want it, didn’t want _you_ , despite that.”

 

Chris hates how much time they’ve wasted, but he know – he understands – that they had to go through it then to even have a chance now.  He just wishes they’d been on the same page the whole time.

 

“I wish we hadn’t said those things in your kitchen,” he says.  He’s never going to be able to take those things back.

 

“Why?” Darren cocks his head.  “They needed to get out.  They were just…poisoning us.  They’ve been poisoning us for years.  Now they’re out there.”  Darren wiggles his fingers in the air.  “Now we know.  We can…” He looks around Chris’ big, boring house.

 

“Start over?”  Chris offers.

 

“Not exactly.  I don’t want to pretend like what we had before never happened.  Because it did.  And it was…” A sweet, almost wistful, smile graces Darren’s features.  It makes Chris’ heart triple time again.  “I don’t want to forget that.  To act like it’s not important.  Because it is.”

 

“So, where do we go from here?”  Chris knows what he wants, but needs Darren to want it too.

 

Darren grabs the bag he’d set down earlier and digs something out.  “Here, I thought you should see this.”

 

Darren hands him the frame holding the photo of him from Bryant Park, the one that was sitting on his bookshelf.  The only picture of Chris Darren seemed to have in his house.

 

“Turn it over,” Darren prompts softly.  There’s a hitch in Darren’s voice that makes Chris’ skin break out in goose pimples.

  
Chris does so with nervous fingers.  He doesn’t even have the breath to gasp when he sees it.  Taped to the back of the frame is an old familiar ring.  The ring Chris was looking for when he was scanning the mementoes from the tour.  The ring Chris hasn’t seen in years.

 

And if he hadn’t already gotten it before, he certainly would now.

 

“You’ve been waiting for me,” he whispers, brushing his fingers across the cool, smooth surface of the ring.  When he looks up, Darren’s got his arms locked around himself again and his cheeks are tinged with pink.  He shrugs, but it’s not the least bit casual.

 

“I always knew.”  And that’s probably Darren’s biggest confession.  It sounds bright and true through the quiet house.

 

“I didn’t.”  Chris can’t let that go unsaid.  They’re laying everything out; he needs to say this too.  “I didn’t know.  But I do now.”

 

Darren’s eyes soften, grow even darker, and Chris swears he can see his pupils dilate.  “I know.”

 

And there it is.  That’s everything.  Chris licks his dry lips and watches as Darren does the same.  There’s really one place to go from here.

 

“Darren,” he starts to say, but Darren is already taking a few steps towards him.  Chris knows well the particular glint in Darren’s eyes.

 

“Chris,” there’s a hint of teasing in his voice as he takes the frame from Chris’ suddenly nerveless fingers and gently sets it aside.

 

“Last night with the wine and the – you didn’t kiss me back.”  Darren’s close enough now that Chris can smell his laundry soap and the lightness of his cologne and something a little like rosemary.

 

“You were completely wasted,” Darren says.  “And it wasn’t the time.  Not then, not like that.”

 

“Then like how?” Chris his cheeks are pink and so are his ears.

 

“Like this.”

 

Darren is smiling and his hands are on his face, cupping his jaw and pulling him gently in.  And that’s what Chris remembers, the sweet pressure of Darren’s mouth against his, the solid warmth of his hands along his jaw and neck, cupping his ears and holding him close.  Darren’s lip ease open and his tongue slips inside.  The taste is shockingly familiar, even after all these years, and Chris inhales as Darren makes a low noise in the back of his throat.

 

“Chris,” Darren pulls just far enough away to say it.  “I know it’s been, like, five minutes but-” his voice has already gone a little ragged.  His hands are moving restlessly down Chris neck to grip at his shoulders, his arms, leaving heated trails in their wake.  Chris is shivering and he’s not the least bit cold.

 

Chris laughs softly against Darren’s mouth and curls his hands around Darren’s waist, pulling at the hoodie.  He wants to touch skin. “Me too.”

 

Darren presses another hard kiss to Chris’ mouth, licks across his lips. “Ok.”

 

Later, Chris won’t remember how they got to his bedroom without tripping up the stairs.  It’s a little bit of a miracle.  His room still has a lamp on from when he was getting ready for bed and it casts enough warm light for Chris to be able to admire the planes and valleys of Darren’s chest and stomach after he tugs off his shirt.  Darren stands still (as still as Darren ever is) as Chris lets his fingers explore, remembering the smoothness of skin and the rasp of hair.  His nipples pebble and tighten under Chris’ touch, muscles in his abdomen flexing as Chris lets his tongue follow his hands.  The V of Darren’s hips, the smooth slopping muscles and the heavy bones, stands out in starker relief than ever before.  Chris slides his fingers along the lines, smoothing over the lower curve of Darren’s belly to graze the waistband of his jeans.  Darren is starting to pant, breath hot against Chris jaw.  Chris remembers that sound, and the others he used to be able to coax from Darren’s throat.  Chris presses in closer, ducks his head, and bites gently at the solid curve of Darren’s collarbone, the way he’s wanted too since he first set eyes on him coming out of the chicken coop in that tank top.  Darren’s cock jerks against Chris’ hip and that he remembers too.

 

“Oh,” Darren says, faintly.  His hands are flexing restlessly against Chris’ waist.  “You know, this isn’t really fair.”

 

Chris tugs his shirt off in one easy move.  “Better?”

 

“Yep.”  Darren reaches out and pulls Chris flush against him again.  Darren’s skin is hot against his and the hair on Darren’s chest and belly rasps deliciously against him.  Their hips align the way they always did, once Chris stopped growing, and Chris thinks he might be content to stand here, grinding against Darren, until they’re both satisfied.  Darren apparently has other plans, because suddenly Chris finds himself getting pushed down onto the unmade mess of his bed.  He goes willingly.

 

Darren rises over him and that’s something Chris is sure he could never forget.  He flushes down to his sternum as Darren licks a path up to his tight, peaked nipples.  Heat twists up in Chris’ belly as Darren sucks sharply on one, tonguing it to hardness.  The pleasure races along his nerves, making him shake.

 

“I know we should uh, take this slow, draw it out,” Darren mutters as he noses against Chris’ throat before biting down gently.  Chris arches beneath him, struggling to get friction against his cock.  “But-”

 

“Oh my god, Darren, take off my pants.  Now.”

  
Darren huffs a laugh against the side of his neck before trailing kisses along his jaw to his mouth.  His tongue slides slickly against Chris and Chris nips at Darren’s upper lip, shifting his hips restlessly.

 

Chris isn’t wearing anything under his sleep pants, something that makes Darren lift an amused eyebrow up at him.  Chris just shrugs as nonchalantly as he can with Darren’s mouth so close to his cock, which is lying half-hard against his thigh, growing thicker with every exhalation of hot breath against his sensitive skin.

  
“I was about to go to bed,” Chris mutters, like it matters.  He reaches down and traces the line of Darren’s jaw.  He thinks he can hear the rasp of his 3-day-old beard against his fingertips.

 

“Sorry to interrupt,” Darren nuzzles into his palm as his hands smooth up and down Chris thighs.  He doesn’t even try to still the faint trembling of his muscles.

 

“Worth it.”

 

Darren blinks slowly up at him.  A sweet, almost shy smile curves his mouth before he’s ducking down and mouthing along the shaft of Chris’ cock.  Chris groans, head dropping back against the pillows and trying to keep his hips from lifting off the bed.  Darren’s mouth is at hot as he remembers, moving over the head of his cock and sucking lightly the way he knows will make Chris grit his teeth and his fingers tighten and twist in the bed sheets.

 

Oh god how he’s missed this.  It’s not like he’s gone without, but it’s never been the same as it was with Darren.  How could it be?  It’s not just skill or technique or any one thing.  It’s that it’s _Darren’s_ mouth and his lips and the heated, wet slide of his tongue and the way he knows just how deep to take him before it’s too much and he’s pulling back, mouthing at taut skin at the juncture of Chris’ groin.  There’s going to be a hickey there, or two, and Chris can’t wait to press his fingers to bruises in the morning to recall the sharp burst of pain.

 

One of Darren’s hands slides around the back of his thigh, pushing his leg up and open.  Heat floods through Chris belly, cock spitting precome across Darren’s tongue, and Chris groans sharply again because he knows exactly what that means.  And he knows how much he wants it.

 

“Middle drawer,” Chris pants.  He’s glad Darren doesn’t ask him if he’s sure.

 

Darren pulls away to slip out of his own pants and rummage through the drawer.  Chris takes a moment to just look at him, the long, sinuous line of his back and the way Darren’s thick cock is flushed dark and hard between his own thighs.  Chris reaches down to stroke lightly at his own cock – wet with Darren’s spit – even though he certainly doesn’t need the touch to stay hard.

 

He knows, distantly, clinically, what they’re doing and why, that they’re reconnecting through touch and taste and the ease of two familiar bodies moving together.  But he also knows it’s so much more than that.  He knows they both need this and that it’s right, it’s okay.  Chris trails the fingers of his other hand down Darren’s flank, watching the way Darren shudders under his light touch.

 

Chris sees Darren grab a condom along with the half-empty tube of lube and that’s something they’ll talk about later.  But wow is he glad he still has both of each.

  
Darren crawls back over him, kneeling between his legs and biting a bruising kiss into his mouth as he pushes Chris’ hand away from his cock.  “Stop that,” he mutters against Chris’ swollen, slick lips.

 

“How’s your knee?”  Chris asks, teasingly, just to hear Darren growl warningly at him.

 

“Holding up.  Your back?”  Darren nips at the hinge of his jaw and mouths at his sensitive earlobe, making him shudder.

 

“Never better.”

 

Chris grips the back of Darren’s neck and spread his legs wide around Darren’s hips, sucking kisses back against Darren’s mouth.  He arches up, rubbing his cock along the groove of Darren’s hip, knowing that he leaves slick precome in his wake.  And that Darren loves it.

  
“Come on,” Chris mumbles, but Darren is already flipping open the lid and pouring lube onto his fingers before shifting back down his body.

 

Chris braces for the cool shock of it and he moans when Darren closes his mouth around the head of his cock just as his wet fingers brush back against his opening.  He hasn’t forgotten how good at this Darren is too.

 

Darren’s finger traces around his hole for long, breathless moment and Chris knows his body is starting to clench around nothing in anticipation.  And that Darren can see it.

 

“Darren,” he grits out, pushing his hips up.

 

“Shh,” Darren whispers, sucking another bruise into Chris’ soft inner thigh as the tip of his finger just begins to breach Chris’ body.  Chris whimpers; he can’t help it.  Darren sucks Chris’ cock back into his mouth and slips his finger all the way inside, reaching deep.  Chris arches into it, head tipping back, and he knows the tendons in his neck are standing out.  He doesn’t care.  Darren’s finger is a solid pressure inside him, but it’s not enough and they both know it.  Darren pulls back and Chris would be embarrassed of the way his asshole clenches to try and keep Darren inside, but he just can’t be.  Not when he knows what’s coming next.  A flush spreads down his chest as Darren eases back inside with two fingers.  The stretch burns, just a little, just the way he remembers.  Darren’s fingers are long and his knuckles are wide and it’s always been so very good.

 

Three fingers push inside his body and Chris groans loudly, body rocking with it.  He can feel lube dripping down his ass and sweat sliding down his hairline and he doesn’t care at all.  Darren thrusts gently, but steadily, stretching him open and sparking pleasure all along his nerves.  His cock throbs hotly in Darren’s mouth.  He’s always loved this part, though maybe not as much as Darren, who moans and spits and swears so loudly he worries about the neighbors when Chris has three fingers thrusting deep and hard inside of him.

 

“Darren, come on.  Please.”  Chris grips at his shoulders, tugging and digging his nails in.  He’s too close to coming already and he needs Darren so much closer than this before it’s over.

 

“Ok, ok.”

  
Darren sits up on his knees, reaching for the condom and rolling it on as quickly as he can.  Chris looks up at him through the haze of his arousal.  Darren’s hair is an absolute mess, curls flopping everywhere and his mouth is and swollen from Chris’ kisses.  He’s flushed red and panting and he’s so fucking gorgeous Chris can’t catch his breath.  He watches as Darren palms more lube on his cock, biting his lip against the touch of his own hand, and Chris spreads his legs wider.

 

Chris winds his arms around Darren’s neck as he leans over him, shifting into position. He feels the head of Darren’s cock slipping slickly against his hole and his belly tightens in heated anticipation.

  
“I’ve missed you,” Chris whispers, because he can, and it’s true.  The scent of arousal is thick and heady in the air and memories of a thousand times just like this rush through him.  Darren surges up, claiming Chris mouth in a deep kiss and swallowing his moans.  It grounds him.

  
“You too.  So much.”  Darren’s voice is raspy and wrecked already.  Chris pushes his hair back from his forehead and the strands are damp with sweat.  Darren looks as wild as Chris feels.

 

“Come on,” Chris lifts his hips again, bumping against the blunt head of Darren’s cock.  He can’t wait any more.  He doesn’t have to.

 

Darren grips himself in one hand and eases inside with a slow, smooth push and Chris feels like he’s breaking apart.  Darren pushes in deeper, past rings of muscle, and it’s like he’s putting Chris back together, piece by piece, inch by inch.  Chris bears down on the blunt pressure and swears.

 

“God, Chris,” Darren groans from deep in his throat as he bottoms out.  He goes still for a moment and Chris is grateful.  The fullness inside, the weight of Darren fucking into his body, makes his blood sing and his heart pounds a staccato beat behind his ribs.  He remembers this too, the heaviness of Darren inside him.  Hot and branding.

 

His mouth falls open as he tries to breathe, but his chest is tight and Darren’s cock is hot and heavy inside him.  It’s too much and it’s not enough and there’s no way he’s going to last.  His cock throbs against his belly, leaking precome all over his stomach as his ass clenches around the thick cock inside him.  He can’t believe how long it’s been since he’s had this.

 

“Come on,” Chris urges.  Sweat is sliding down his neck, beading under his arms, and slicking along every point of contact between their bodies.  It’s hot, so hot, and every slow drag of Darren inside him makes him shudder.

 

Darren pulls out slowly, the head of his cock just catching against Chris’ rim, before he fucks back inside.  Chris’ voice catches in his throat on a groan and he knows when Darren finds his rhythm it’s not going to take much for him to come.   He doesn’t care.  They have all the time in the world for this now.

  
Darren keeps a slow and steady pace that makes heat burn all through Chris’ limbs.  He feels wound tight and pulled loose all at once, body moving with every thrust.  Darren lowers himself to his elbows to bite at Chris’ lips and the shift of angle makes Chris cry out into his mouth.

 

“Jesus, Darren…I-” Chris gasps out.  He rakes his nails down Darren’s back and wraps his legs around Darren’s hips, heels digging into his flexing ass.  His cock rubs along Darren’s stomach with every thrust and the friction makes him shake.

 

“I know,” Darren pants.  He bites at Chris’ neck and Chris’ cock throbs sharply.  It’s so good it hurts.

 

“I know it’s been, like, five minutes but…” Chris bears down around Darren’s cock and Darren swears loudly between breathless huffs laughter.

 

“Me too.”  One of Darren’s hands begins to slide down Chris’ sweat-slick torso towards his cock.  “Do you need…?”

Chris shakes his head and then moans at a particular hard snap of Darren’s hips against his ass.  “Nope.  Oh god, no.  I’m good.  So good.  Just…” Chris’ mouth falls open on a silent gasp as Darren nudges up against his prostate with spectacular aim.

 

Darren knows what he needs.  He always did.  Darren shifts on his knees again, finding the just the right angle, drawing a long, broken sound from Chris at the heavy drag of his cock inside him.  His rhythm picks up just a bit, just enough, and the perfect pleasure of it makes Chris’ toes curl into Darren’s ass.  He can’t possibly be expected to hold on any longer.

 

“Chris,” Darren whispers against his mouth and it’s all Chris needs.  His body tightens up, clenching hard down around Darren’s cock as he comes, spilling hot and messy all over himself.  His eyes snap shut as wave after wave wracks through him and pleasure blooms white behind his eyes.  He knows he’s shaking and moaning and Darren fucks him right through it, the way he’s always liked it.  Every drag of his cock sends sparks along Chris’ heavy limbs and he squeezes his eyes shut against it all.

  
“Chris,” Darren moans his name again when Chris has started to come back to himself.  His voice is tight, broken, and his thrusts have lost their steady rhythm.  Chris knows he’s close.

 

“Come on,” he says, pushing his fingers through Darren’s swear-damp hair and gripping the heat of his body down around Darren’s cock.  And that’s enough for him too.

 

Chris can feel the heavy pulse of Darren’s cock inside him as he comes.  He wishes he could feel the wet heat spilling inside, but that will have to wait.  Darren’s thrusts weaken and slow until he’s just barely holding himself inside.  He’s panting and shaking and his face is screwed up tight against his own pleasure.  He’s still so beautiful.  Chris’ cock is softening, but he manages to spit a final dribble of come when Darren pushes inside him one last time and goes still.  He wants Darren to stay buried inside for longer, but knows he can’t, not when there’s a condom to deal with.

  
Darren pulls back long enough to throw the condom into the trash before he collapses heavy and solid against Chris’ chest, breathing harshly.  Chris wraps his arms around his shoulders and holds him as tightly as he can.  The room smells of sex and come and the two of them together and Chris just wants to bury his nose in Darren’s hair and sleep.  Darren’s stomach is hot against Chris’ sensitive cock and Chris can feel Darren’s twitching weakly against his thigh.  Everything is wet and sticky and probably really gross and he doesn’t care at all.  Not when Darren’s pulse is still pounding and Chris finally feels like everything has been righted within himself.  Warmth spreads all through his limbs, centering in his chest and belly.

 

“Can I say it?”  Darren asks after long minutes of gentle quiet, broken by nothing but their slowing breathing and the beating of their hearts.

 

“No,” Chris responds.  His fingers are drawing random patterns against Darren’s sweat-slick back.  He knows what he needs to do to be able to keep this, this time.

 

“Chris.”

 

“Fine.”

 

Darren props his chin on Chris’ chest.  His lips are red and swollen, cheeks flushed darkly, eyes gone a burnt whiskey gold, and he’s so fucking gorgeous Chris’ heart stutters.

 

“I love you,” Darren says, lips smiling around the words.  He’s never looked so guileless, so open.

 

Chris rubs his thumb along the chords of Darren’s neck, up his jaw, and across his mouth.  He touches the scar on his chin he never asked about.  He should have known, all this time he should have known, but he does now.  He can’t change the past but he can make the future.  He’s going to deserve the trust Darren has in him.

 

“I know,” he whispers.  It’s time.  “I love you too.”

 

Darren’s smile is about as bright as the San Francisco sun and he nips at Chris thumb before pushing up his body to capture his mouth in a deep, messy kiss.  Chris pulls Darren up in his arms and rolls them out of the wet spot.  He’s sticky and covered in his own come and Darren’s sweat, but he doesn’t care.  He’s not ready to let go of Darren, not even for a washcloth.  He’s got so much time to make up for.

 

“We’re going to need to talk about our living situation,” Darren mumbles, when he finally pulls back from Chris’ mouth.  Chris can feel his body growing heavy in his arms and know he’s not long for sleep.  Neither of them are.

  
Chris _hmms_ into Darren’s neck, licks lightly at it.  “Briggs would miss you, if you moved away.”

 

“He would.”  Darren’s tone, just short of shy, lets Chris know he’s cottoning on to what Chris is trying to suggest for them.

 

“And there’s your chickens.  Can’t abandon them.”

 

“It would be animal cruelty,” Darren agrees.  Chris can hear he’s smiling.

 

“Darren.”

 

“I’m not going to ask you to move.”

 

“You don’t have to.”  Chris had known the moment Darren kissed him in his living room.

 

Darren goes still in his arms and then surges up to capture Chris’ mouth.  Their noses bump and so do their teeth and it’s some kind of perfect.

 

“You’ll love San Francisco,” he breathes out.  His eyes are so bright and so full of hope that it makes Chris’ fingers tingle.

 

“I know I will.” Chris smoothes his hands down Darren’s back.  “You’re there.”

 

“I’ve got a room you can set your office up in.  So you can write.”

  
Chris can feel Darren’s heart starting to pound against his own chest.  “Oh good, because I think I’ve got a new idea.  A better idea.”

 

“Oh really?”  Darren’s cheeks are still pink from sex, but Chris can see a new flush blooming.

 

“Yeah,” Chris presses a slow, sweet kiss to Darren’s waiting mouth.  “I think you’re gonna love it.”

 

A happy, content noise comes from the back of Darren’s throat before he snuggles back down into Chris’ arms.  Chris pets his fingers through Darren’s hair and presses a kiss to the top of his head.  They’re not perfect, not yet.  But he’s pretty sure they could be. Chris has told a lot of stories in his time, but he thinks the one he’s about to tell (the one he should have been working on the whole time) is going to be his best yet.

 

There are words for what he and Darren are, stretched somewhere between them, and Chris going to spend the rest of his life discovering what they are and whispering them into Darren’s skin until they sink into his bones.


	7. Epilogue: Awake My Soul

(1)

 

In the end, Chris doesn’t have that much to pack up and bring with him to Darren’s house.  There’s his clothing, sure, and his photos (Darren is more than eager to make space on his walls Chris’ family photos), and various other personal items.  And of course there’s Brian.  But his life – the important parts of it anyway – fits into surprisingly few boxes.  It’s a little disconcerting when he sees it piled up like that.  The parallel to his discarded book isn’t lost on him.

 

Darren ends up driving down to Los Angeles in his old red truck and the two of them together load up the bed with what little Chris is taking with him.  The house has already been sold, the furniture too, and Chris spares one last look at the white-walled living room before closing the door gently behind him.  They spend the long drive back north to San Francisco with the windows down and the radio blasting so loud it reverberates in Chris’ chest.  He lets the wind ruffle through his hair and rests his hand over Darren’s on the gearshift.

 

When they get to the house, Darren steps aside and nudges at Chris to go ahead and unlock the door.  His eyes are soft and he doesn’t say anything, but Chris understands anyway.  He digs his set of keys out his pocket, staring at them as his heart squeezes tight in his chest.

 

He remembers the day Darren gave him the keys, a couple weeks after they started doing…whatever it is they’re doing.  (He isn’t worried about giving it a name.)  Chris had been getting some tea in the kitchen when Darren appeared.

 

“Here,” Darren had said, apropos of nothing, and tossed something at him.

 

Chris’ hand had jerked up automatically and snatched it out of the air before it smacked him in the face.  He’d opened his palm to reveal several shiny keys attached to a bright pink guitar pick.

 

“What’s this?” Chris had asked, even though what it was couldn’t have been more obvious.  His heart had obviously known, considering how fast it had begun to race.

 

“Clearly it’s a portal to another dimension.” Darren had grinned cheekily at him, but there was a hesitation in his eyes that let Chris know he was still a little worried about Chris’ reaction.

 

“There’s the front and back door keys,” Darren had continued and he’d been gesturing wildly.  “Then the one for the chicken coop and the shed.  The whole to-do.”  Darren had shoved his hands in his pockets then and that’s how Chris had known how nervous he really was.  As if Chris hadn’t already said yes months ago.

 

Chris had crossed the room, pulled Darren up into a firm kiss, and added the keys (and the pink guitar pick) to his keychain, which then only had his car key attached.  The weight of them had been so incredibly gratifying.

 

Darren’s hand on his waist brings him back to the present.

 

“Hey,” Darren says and he squeezes lightly at Chris’ hip.  “Want me to carry you across the threshold?”

 

“Oh, shut up,” Chris nudges at Darren’s shoulder, but he’s smiling.  He can’t deny the way something deep inside of him brightens and warms at the thought.  There’s so much they’re moving towards, step by step, even if those steps are moving quickly by anyone else’s standard.  They’ve got a lot of time to make up for.  He doesn’t know if _that_ is in their future, not yet.  But it’s not completely out of the picture.  Not anymore.

 

He slips the key into the lock and opens the door.  Darren’s hand is firm pressure against his waist.

 

It doesn’t take long at all to move Chris’ things into the house.  Briggs shows up about five minutes after Darren’s truck rumbles up the driveway and he barks conversationally at Chris before coming over and leaning heavily against Chris’ legs, demanding to be petted.  When Chris glances up from scratching at Briggs’ flanks, Darren is looking at them both with a nearly inscrutable expression.  It makes warmth flare in Chris’ belly.  Briggs pads inside the house and he sits in the living room, watching the proceedings from the best vantage point.  Most of the boxes go in the bedroom (his clothes), and more go in the living room (the books and DVDs and personal items), but a couple boxes get taken upstairs to the little room that Darren offered up to Chris as a place for him to write.

 

Chris sets down the box that contains the paper manuscripts of his other novels and looks around.  The walls are still blank – Darren never used this room – but at some point Darren bought a wooden desk that looks like it’s seen some good years.  It’s aged, but well cared for, probably an antique.  It’s big enough for Chris’ laptop and a lamp and everything else he knows he’s going to spread out across the smooth surface.  It’s beautiful and it’s completely unexpected.  Chris stares at it for a long moment.

 

He goes back downstairs to find Darren in the living room putting his books on the cases.  He’s taking some his own books from the already full shelves and interspersing them with Chris’ new additions.  There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme, pattern, or reason to it and it makes Chris’ chest ache with fierce adoration for him.  He crosses the room, mindful of Juniper who tends to want to twine around his feet while he’s walking.

 

“I saw what you put in the office, mister,” Chris says as he comes up behind Darren and wrap his arms low around his middle.  Darren doesn’t even startle, just leans back into his embrace.  He’s wearing a cozy sweater that’s soft underneath Chris’ hands.

 

“ _Your_ office,” Darren corrects and keeps shelving books.  His voice is pitched low and Chris catches the new rasp that brings a deeper quality to his tone.

 

Chris rests his chin on Darren’s shoulder, pressing in close.  “Thank you,” he whispers.  Darren smells of leaves and wool and winter smoke.

 

“Welcome home.”

 

***

(2)

 

The sweat is still cooling on his skin as Darren settles against Chris’ body, in the space made for him by Chris’ spread thighs.

 

“Well,” he pants.  His cheek is hot against Chris’ flushed chest and fine tremors are still running through his limbs.  He feels weak and boneless and sated.  He feels happy.  The sheets smell of sweat and come, Chris’ shampoo and his own soap, and he wants to pull the covers over their heads and never leave.

 

“Yeah,” Chris agrees and Darren rumbles a little laugh.  Chris’ soft hands are on his back, tracing random patterns and it feels so good against his sensitive skin that he shivers.

 

“We’re really good at this.”  Darren rubs his stubbled cheek against Chris’ chest, just to make him squirm.  He’s always loved how responsive Chris is, how he flushes red at the lightest tough, trembling with every kiss.  It makes him feel so wanted, so loved in return.

 

Chris’ belly jumps against his hips as he laughs and his hand slides up to cup the back of Darren’s neck, tugging gently.  Darren lifts his head to rest his chin on Chris’ sternum.

 

“Dork,” Chris mutters and his voice is so full of affection is makes Darren warm down to his toes.  Chris’ eyes are so blue in the dim lighting of their bedroom, open and trusting, intent.

 

 _Our bedroom_ , Darren thinks with wonder.  He’d stopped thinking of it as _his_ bedroom a bare week after Chris moved in.

 

Chris’ hand slides along his jaw and Darren nuzzles into his palm.  Chris is gazing into his face, thumb firm against his chin, and Darren knows he’s staring at the crooked white scar there.

 

He knows Chris wants to ask, has wanted to ask since he first showed up at Darren’s place all those months ago.  But it makes him nervous; he knows what he’ll be exposing about himself when he tells the story.  He wishes he could say it happened when he was building the chicken coop, but there other scars from that adventure.  There’s the thin one on his ankle from when he tripped over the bundle of chicken wire.  And the patch on his upper arm the size of a nail head from when he caught himself on an exposed nail he hadn’t hammered in all the way.  He’s pretty proud of those; he built that damn coop all by himself and those are his fucking war wounds.

 

But the one on his chin is a different kind of wound altogether.

 

Chris must sense the tension rising in his body because he brushes his thumb across Darren’s lips.  “You don’t have to tell me.”

 

“It’s fine.”  He knows Chris deserves to understand everything.  There are still gaps in the last five years, but they’re filling them in.  “It’s…probably going to ruin the afterglow we’ve got going on here.”

  
Chris’ fingers travel along his jaw in that old familiar gesture.  “It’s ok,” he says and Darren knows it will be.

 

“I tripped,” Darren begins after a deep breath.  “I tripped and fell and hit the edge of a table.”  He knows it’s just the barest bones of the story, but he wants to give Chris time to take each piece and let them sink in.

 

“Ok.”

 

“I was…drunk.”

 

Chris’ lips press together into a thin line.  “Ok.”

 

“It was,” Darren swallows.  He hates that the story has to be told, more so that it even exists at all.  Chris fingers scratch encouragingly through his hair.  “It was after you – after we…I got drunk.  I didn’t have anything else, any other way to, to cope.  Which was really fucking dumb of me I _know_.  And I was at home, alone, getting stupid drunk and I tried to get to the couch to lie down and I tripped.  Over the rug, over my feet, over nothing at all.  And I hit the table.”

 

Darren shudders at the memory.  He was with it enough to vaguely remember the fall and the jarring impact and how his first worry was if he’d chipped another fucking tooth.  He hadn’t knocked himself (or any teeth) out and he remembers being sprawled out on the floor with blood streaming down his face and neck to the carpet below.  And he remembers the shame and embarrassment that had brought him to tears.

  
The look in Chris’ eyes in indescribable as Darren recounts that night, but he’s not upset, not with Darren.  Darren loves him for that too.

 

“I couldn’t go to the ER.”  Darren presses forward, determined to finish, even though the memory tastes like bile.  “Not like that.  It would have been a fucking mess.”  He doesn’t need to explain to Chris the fall out if fans or the media had heard about him drunk and injured by his own heartbreak.

 

“I called Joey.  He brought someone over.  They stitched me up in my own fucking kitchen.  It was…” Mortifying.  Embarrassing.  Humiliating.  “A fucking wake up call.”  Darren ducks his head and buries his nose into Chris’ naked chest.

 

“Darren,”

 

“Don’t you _dare_ blame yourself for my drunk ass,” Darren almost growls and he wedges his hands under Chris’ sides.  “It wasn’t your fault.  It wasn’t about you.”  He looks back up into Chris’ eyes.  They’re nothing but understanding in them.  “I mean it _was_ , but it mostly about me.  I finally realized I wasn’t handling everything the right way; I wasn’t handling it at all.  And that’s when I decided to pack everything up and get the hell out.  So yeah, I did run.  But it was the best thing for me.  I know it wasn’t fair to you, but-”

 

“But I wasn’t being fair to you either.”

  
Darren shrugs a little.  Surely Chris must know that chapter is written and the pages have been turned.  The fingers that soothe down Darren’s neck say Chris does get it.

 

“Well,” Chris begins, licking his lips.  “It makes you look ruggedly handsome if that’s an consolation.”

 

The laughter bursts out of Darren unexpectedly.  He pushes up Chris’ body and finds his mouth in a deep, slow-moving kiss.  Darren slides his tongue along Chris’ as Chris deftly rolls them onto their sides.  He’s always loved the way Chris could move him around if he wanted to.  Chris pulls away with a slick sound that has Darren angling up for more until Chris’ long arms are winding around his body and pulling him in close.

 

Darren closes his eyes and snuggles in, getting a knee between Chris’ thighs and his face in the familiar crook of Chris’ throat.

 

“I’m going to make these years up to you,” Chris whispers into his hair and it makes Darren’s heart ache.

 

“I know.  I am too.  For you.”

 

There are many different kinds of scars, and Darren knows that every of one his, and every one of Chris’, are some kind of beautiful, if only to each other.

 

*******

(3)

 

The house is quiet as Darren stands in his bedroom, looking into the full-length mirror, gauging his appearance. He’d taken more than 5 minutes to get dressed that evening, finding his cleanest pair of jeans (they really need to do laundry) and a button down shirt that’s been hanging long enough to be almost wrinkle-free.  His hair is still damp at the ends from his shower and he wonders if he should have shaved.  Chris likes his scruff, but sometimes Darren thinks a smooth face makes him seem like he tried a little bit harder to look presentable.

 

Juniper is watching him from the bed, her bright yellow eyes fixed on him.

 

“What’cha think, girl?  Should I shave?”  He runs his hand along his prickly jaw and Juniper just blinks at him.

 

“Yeah, thought so.”

  
Darren takes a last look at himself in the mirror before grabbing a tie from the rack and knotting it around his neck because, well, it’s that kind of night.

 

Chris is in the office down the hall from the bedroom.  Darren knows because Chris has been locked away in the office for the last couple of days, and because he can hear Chris muttering to himself over the light tapping of his fingers on the keyboard.

 

Darren peeks into the room.  Chris is behind the desk Darren bought for him, one leg tucked up while he sits hunched over, staring intently at the laptop screen.  His posture is terrible, despite the yoga he’s starting doing, and Darren’s shoulder blades twinge in sympathy.  Darren leans against the doorframe and just watches Chris type for a long moment.  Chris’ nose is scrunched in concentrated and there’s a faint line between his eyebrows.  He’s wearing his glasses and his fingers are moving quickly and steadily.

 

He knows what happened with Chris’ old book, how he shredded the pages and deleted the files.  He hopes Chris knows how proud he is of him for that.  It takes a lot to realize when something just isn’t going to work and to start over when the time comes.  Darren’s thrown out his fair share of sheet music when the notes just wouldn’t make a melody.  There’s no shame in it.  And clearly something is working now, if the time Chris has been spending writing is any indication.  He won’t tell Darren what the story is, but if the soft look in his eyes when he’s thinking about it is indication, it’s something good.  Something worthy.  Darren’s thankful for that.

 

Briggs is on the floor by Chris’ feet.  Actually he’s probably lying _on_ his feet and he doesn’t even open his eyes at Darren.

 

“Hey,” Darren says softly and Chris looks up.  His expression is almost guilty.

 

“What time is it?” Chris asks, handing still on the keyboard.

 

“Almost seven.”

 

Chris looks around the room and Darren wants to smile at how startled he looks that it’s gotten that late.  “Shit.  Sorry, I just.  I was writing and-”

 

“I know,” Darren cuts him off gently.

 

Chris eyes suddenly focus on him.  He frowns slightly. “You’re wearing a tie.”

 

“I am.”  Darren grins as Chris looks down at himself.  He’s wearing old jeans and a t-shirt that is most certainly one of Darren’s.

 

“Do I have time to change?  I didn’t forget, I just-”

 

Darren would say something incredibly cheesy about how he thinks Chris looks great all the time, but that usually results in Chris rolling his eyes at him.  “Lost track of time.  I get it.”

 

Chris rubs at the side of his neck, like he’s embarrassed.  But Darren is well used to the way Chris can get lost in his work.  It doesn’t mean Darren is any less important to him, just that his writing is important too.  It’s something they’ve both worked on understanding about each other.

  
Darren walks around the desk.  Chris turns to the chair, leg unfolding from underneath himself, and Darren steps between his thighs.  “There’s time to change,” he says, and reaches down to cup Chris’ face in his hands.  “I’m not on until 8.”  Darren ducks down and presses a warm, sweet kiss to Chris’ lips.

 

“I’ll be downstairs when you’re ready.”  Darren kisses him again, because he can, before leaving the office.

 

\---

 

When Darren pulls his truck into the parking lot of the little Italian restaurant, there are a couple of guys with giant cameras loitering around.  He feels Chris so tense and still in the passenger seat and Darren bites down on his lip.  He’s not sure why there are any paparazzi there at all.  It’s not like they’re in Hollywood walking into one of those places where photographers hang out waiting for the celebrities who show up just to get their photos taken and published.  This is a little restaurant in San Francisco.  He and Chris are just there for a nice dinner and a little bit of music, like everyone else.

  
Darren drives past them to pull into a parking spot, noting the look of confusion on their faces as they recognize him, but not his truck.  He forgets what people know and don’t know about him anymore.  Darren takes his seatbelt off, but doesn’t get out of the car.  Next to him, Chris takes a slow, steadying breath.

 

“You don’t have to do this,” Chris offers, his voice soft.  Darren flexes his hands.  This is Chris given him, giving _them_ , an out.  This is Chris saying they can go home and not get photographed going into a fairly romantic restaurant together.  Even though Chris has already been seen wearing his clothes.

 

“I’m not _doing_ anything,” Darren says.  He looks over at Chris, who’s now wearing nicer (tighter) jeans and a dress shirt.  He’d put on his own tie, steel grey to go with Darren’s midnight blue one.  Chris’ eyes are calm, understanding.

 

“I’m with you.” Chris reaches across to rest his hand over Darren’s where he’s still holding the steering wheel.  “Whatever you want.”

 

“We’re going out to dinner,” Darren states.  There’s no way a couple of fucking paparazzi are going to ruin the evening he’s planned.  “I’m pulling out your chair.  And I’m eating off your plate.  And I’m singing you a fucking song.  We’re not _doing_ anything.”

 

Chris’ solemn, caring expression breaks into a bright grin.  “All right then.  Let’s go not do something together.”

  
Darren lifts Chris’ hand to his lips and brushes a kiss across his knuckles before getting out of the truck and grabbing his guitar from the back.  He is so in love with this man he’s stupid with it.

 

The guys with the cameras start calling out their names as soon as they come around.  The flashes are bright, but Darren doesn’t lift his hand to cover his face as they walk towards the restaurant.

 

“Hey guys,” he says as conversationally as he can.  “How it going?”  Chris is walking close enough to him that their arms brush together.

 

“What are you guys doing here tonight?”  One of the guys asks in a tone that implies he knows exactly what they’re doing.

 

Darren glances over at Chris.  His cheeks are a little pink, but his gaze is steady.  It’s time for this too.  Chris nods, just a tiny movement of his head, and Darren smiles at him.  Not the cameras.

 

“Well, just trying to go on a date,” he says.  Voice loud and clear.  “So if you don’t mind…”

 

Next to him, Chris extends his elbow and Darren loops his arm through it.  He has songs he wants to sing for Chris tonight, and a plate or two of pasta he wants to share.  If other people know about that too, well, they’re not the important ones in his relationship.  And Darren is done caring about anyone else.

 

***

(4)

  
Chris never means to kick Darren out of his big cozy chair, but it just sort of happens sometimes.  The chair is almost perfect – wide and deep with just the right amount of cushion and Chris has spent his share of afternoons curled up in it with a book and a never-ending cup of tea.  (Sometimes Juniper tries to fight Brian for space on his lap, which usually results in an hour lost to petting two sets of ears.)  The chair is big, but not big enough for two fully-grown men, or even one fully-grown man and one Darren-sized man.  They’d tried, once, to sit together with their books, but it had ended with Chris getting a sharp elbow in the gut and Darren’s ass balancing precariously on his thigh.  (And then it had ended again with Darren’s ass elsewhere.  Turns out two men can fit if they position themselves creatively and in ways not all conducive to reading.)

 

They generally end up on the couch together instead.  Sometimes on opposite ends with their feet reaching for the middle.  Brian will claim his spot on Chris’ lap and Juniper will try in vain to get Brian’s attention by poking at his tail with her little paw.  Chris is glad the cats get along, despite their 15-year age gap and completely opposite personalities.  There had been a tense moment the first full week Chris had stayed over at Darren’s and had brought Brian with him.  Briggs had been kept outside (whining pathetically at the back door) while Brian sniffed his way around the house.  But there was no stopping Juniper from getting right into Brian’s business.  She’d batted at his tail and tried to chew on his ears until Brian had smacked her soundly on the head.  Chris had been so worried until he looked over and saw Darren biting back laughter.

 

“She’ll learn to leave the old man alone,” Darren had said and he finally managed to snatch the little back cat off the floor.  It took Brian some time to warm up to her (unused to something so full of energy), but eventually he’d given in to her incessant desire to play and only occasionally hissed at her to back off.  And Chris’ heart had done a funny flippy thing when he came across the two of them napping together in the sun.

 

Sometimes he and Darren stretch out together, with Darren sprawled between Chris’ legs and leaning back against his chest.  Or the other way around.  It doesn’t matter as long as he’s got Darren one way or the other.  This lazy Sunday afternoon Chris has Darren pressed warm and pliant against him with a book propped on his stomach.  Chris should be reading too – he’s got his own book – but his eyes keep drifting shut, lulled by the warmth of Darren between his legs and all along his stomach.  Chris has one hand splayed wide across Darren’s chest and his fingers are playing absently with the little circular bump underneath Darren’s shirt, tracing the edge around and around.  He knows that if he were to draw his fingers up Darren’s chest he would feel the ridges of a thin chain.  The heavy knowledge of its presence, the physical reminder that it’s _right there_ makes Chris’ belly draw up tight for a moment.  He suddenly presses his palm down over the ring and Darren takes a deep breath, chest rising up against the pressure.

 

Darren has been wearing the ring – the one he’d taped to the back of a photo, the one he’d stopped wearing years ago – on a chain around his neck.  He almost never takes it off, though it stays hidden under his shirt, cool surface warming against his skin.

  
Chris never asked Darren to put it back on, even though he’d keenly missed the sight of it on Darren’s finger.  But the chain had appeared a few weeks after that night at Chris’ house, after they’d gone on what could be called dates, after Darren’s sheets started smelling of Chris.  He knows what it means that it’s on Darren’s person at all.  It’s leaps and bounds forward from where they were, towards where they’re heading.  Chris presses down harder on the ring and wonders if it’s leaving an indent in Darren’s skin.

 

“It took me months to stop automatically reaching for it to put it on,” Darren says.  His voice is soft, almost a whisper.  He sets his book down on the floor and rests his hand over Chris’ on his chest.  Something huge is brewing; Chris can feel it in his gut, gathering in the air.

 

“It’s why I taped it to that photo.  I could bear to get rid of it.”  There’s a hitch in his voice, something almost like reverence, and Chris’ chest hurts at the thought of the ring being gone for good.  “But I couldn’t…having it near was-”

 

“Too hard for you.  I get it.”  And Chris does.  He went through his house and removed every photo of Darren he had (and he was surprised by how few there were), but he couldn’t just toss them.  They’d gone into a shoebox and remained there until he moved his life into Darren’s house.  The old photos are finding their way into new frames and spots on the walls and shelves.  He knows now what he put Darren through, what they did to each other.

 

“It’s my favorite picture of you.”  It sounds like Darren is giving confession, but Chris thinks their sins are in the past.  “So it felt right to put it there.  For safe keeping.”

  
Chris slips his fingers under the collar of Darren’s shirt, finding the chain and tugging it free.  He lets the ring rest on his palm.  It hasn’t changed at all – still just a wide circle of jade.  Unfaded, unblemished.  Smooth of chips or cracks.  Chris slides his thumb across the surface, still very faintly warm from Darren’s skin.  He doesn’t know how such a simple, unadorned thing can mean so much.  Chris knows Darren’s is watching his fingers and he can feel the way his pulse has quickened.  The room seems to grow warmer around them.

 

Darren shifts against Chris, just a little, tipping his head slightly and Chris gets the signal loud and clear.  He carefully slips the chain over Darren’s head and unclasps it, allowing the ring to slide onto his palm.  It’s always heavier than he expects it to be – a solid, undeniable presence.  When he’d picked it up off the tray, the weight had surprised him then too.  But it had felt right.

 

“I didn’t even like this one the most,” Chris muses, halfway lost in his memories.  He deftly turns the ring over and over between his fingers.  “It was the one that fit you.”

 

It had been a tiny little shop on a busy street run by a little old lady with a thick Irish accent an a toothy smile – a tourist trap, really.  He hadn’t gone in with any intentions, maybe a couple of postcards that he would probably beat back home – but then he’d seen the case at the front with all the jewelry.  There were tradition silver Claddaghs in various sizes and ornateness.  But then there had been other rings – some gold, some silver, others jade.  Chris had been drawn to the jade, probably pulled in by the bright green amidst all the metal.  He’d had Darren try a few on until one – that one – finally sat just right.  They’re hadn’t been too many words said between them.

 

Darren tips his head back and his upside-down grin is so big and bright his eyes disappear.  “It still fits.”

 

Chris can’t help the laugh that escapes him.  Darren’s penchant for random fits of romanticism still catches him off guard.  But there’s something behind else behind his grin and the cheek in his voice, something deeper.  It makes the grin fade from Chris’ face and his breath catch in his throat.  He bites his lip.

 

“Well,” Chris says and lifts Darren’s right hand up.  Darren whole body goes tense and his mouth drops open.  “Let’s see.”

  
Darren isn’t breathing and neither is Chris as he slides the ring onto Darren’s middle finger.  It slips past the knuckle and settles at the base, where it’s always belonged. Chris drops his hand to Darren’s chest and Darren flexes his fingers, like he’s trying to readjust to the weight of the ring.  Chris’ belly twists up tight at the sight of it and he’s pretty sure Darren’s does too.  He knows what it means, to have Darren wearing it again, and what it doesn’t.  But the weight behind it, the years and the miles, says everything.

 

“Darren,” Chris chokes out.  Darren just blinks owlishly up at him.

 

“I know.  Me too.”

 

“You don’t even-”

 

“Of course I do.”  Darren interrupts.  His lips quirk into a smile as his hand comes to rest over Chris’, the one still lying on his chest.  Chris can feel the smooth surface of the ring pressing into his knuckle.

 

“Asshole,” Chris mutters.  He bends low over Darren, back and neck straining as he presses a kiss as near to his mouth as he can.

 

“Yeah,” Darren agrees, smiling against the edge of Chris’ mouth.

  
Chris settles back into the cushions and Darren grabs his book off the floor.  There are a few hours until dinnertime and Chris knows the cats will come bothering them and Briggs might even make his way over from his own house to eat the food the food he knows Darren will put out for him.  Until then, Chris is more than content to read his book with Darren warm and snug against his body while his thumb strokes slowly and rhythmically against the ring.


End file.
